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newsletter://mv.com
October 2001
DSL news
MV offers two different kinds of DSL service: DSL/C, which is provi-
sioned on its own pair of wires; and DSL/V, implemented on an existing Ver-
izon voice line. This month we have some news regarding both. For more
information on our DSL service, check out our web page at
http://dsl.mv.net/.
DSL/C promotion: For orders place before December 8, 2001, the normal
installation fee of $100 will be waived. (This does not cover the required
modem or any charge for inside wiring or loop extension at your location.)
Note that we will still be requiring the $100 payment with the service
order, but this amount will be credited to your account rather than paid to
installer as an installation fee. We have attractive prices on DSL/C resi-
dential and business service where DSL/C is available.
New DSL/V areas: 5 new New Hampshire towns have been added to the DSL/V
service area. These new towns are Bedford, Claremont, Durham, Keene, and
Somersworth. Contact us to find out if you are eligible for service in
these new areas!
DSL/V specials: We're working on some promotions for DSL/V -- the news is
not yet ready so please check our web site periodically for further infor-
mation.
DSL/V speed conversions and updates: data rates available with DSL/V have
changed since this service was first introduced. For customers installed
under the old speeds, the DSL/V carrier (Verizon) performed upgrades to the
new speeds during the month of September. Thus, all customers installed at
the original data rates have been converted to the new. Of particular
interest, the original standard data rate of 640K/90K (640Kbps toward you,
90Kbps towards MV) has been changed to 768K/128K. Some additional speed
choices were also made available over the summer, as we reported in our
August newsletter. And finally, the qualifying distance for some DSL/V
services has been increased, so if you tried to get service earlier in the
year but were just slightly too far away, you may get a different result
now. The the maximum distance for the 768K/128K DSL/V service is now
18,000 feet from the central office.
Updates on other new and coming things
Over the past months we have mentioned a number of new things coming.
Sometimes we shy away from announcing things before they happen, and other
times we tell you about them if we have a great certainty that they will
arrive on time. Here are some updates for some things over the past 6
months that, frankly, have taken way longer than expected.
COLO: Our co-location area has been open for business most of the year, and
we rapidly reached the point where (as some of you know) extra cooling was
needed. We installed two duplicate AC units in this area providing redun-
dant service. This cooling is now operational and we are again taking new
orders for this service. Co-location lets you place a server in our facil-
ity so that you can take advantage of high speed Internet bandwidth and
redundant Internet connections at a much lower cost than bringing this
bandwidth to your location. See http://colo.mv.net/ for more information.
Bandwidth: We've had significant new bandwidth on order since April; the
original due date was June 1. Due to external circumstances this date has
slipped many times. At this writing we expect the new bandwidth to be in
place around the end of October.
Domain Registration: In August we announced our partnership with the Open-
SRS domain registrar, allowing us to provide domain registration services
to you at a very attractive rate. Our implementation of software to sup-
port this has taken longer than anticipated, but we do expect to have this
service available real soon now. In the meantime, we are able to process
your requests manually; go to http://home.mv.net/ for more information.
Email Billing + Donations
As you know, we have a statement fee for any invoices that we must
send via postal mail. You can avoid this fee by allowing us to send you an
invoice via email -- to convert to email billing, either contact us
directly or use a web browser to go to this URL:
http://home.mv.net/emailrequest
Many of you have made the switch to email billing over the past few months,
but there are lot more of you who could still do so and save this fee.
We told you that we would be donating the statement fees from the
September billing (last month), as well as some additional money, to chari-
table causes -- half to relief funds for the September 11 attacks, and half
to New Hampshire causes. We can report that the total reserved for these
contributions came to $2400.00, which will be disbursed in the next couple
of weeks. Some of you sent some suggestions for local causes -- many
thanks for the ideas.
Misc Notes
Be aware that the rate change for standard dialup services, announced
earlier this year, takes effect as of October 1 (and of this invoice).
Did you know that MV operates a TUCOWS mirror site for Windows and
Linux software? The TUCOWS archives are a reknowned source for software;
copies (or "mirrors") of the archives are operated by volunteer sites
around the world so that you can find one that's near to you and fast for
you. You can find these mirror sites by going to http://www.tucows.com/ --
or you can go directly to MV's mirror site at http://tucows.mv.net/ and
http://linuxberg.mv.net/. Many thanks go to to Eric Poole of RKT Technolo-
gies (http://www.netis.com/) for operating these mirror sites!
Also a reminder that we have a number of local Usenet newsgroups for
discussion of MV services or issues affecting users of MV services. The
mv.forum.general newsgroup is for general discussions; there are also news-
groups for individual services (such as mv.forum.dsl for DSL services) and
for outages announcements (mv.info.outages). You can use our newsgroup
finder (at http://www.mv.com/cgi-bin/mv-news) to find out which mv.* news-
groups exist, or you can simply use your newsreader software to find groups
starting with "mv." . (Thanks to DJ Delorie (http://www.delorie.com/) for
providing the "newsgroup finder" software.)
Information about outages and other news is also provided on our web
server. Go to our web page (http://www.mv.com/) and pull down the MV
Information tab and you will see the links to these and other items.
MV Communications PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000