NewsLetter May 2002   SECTION I— New Hours, New Locations EXPANDED CALL CENTER HOURS NEW COVERAGE AREAS FOR BROADBAND AND VOICE SECTION II—Voice and Data Services News MORE SERVER SPACE FOR YOUR MONEY REMOTE DIAL-IN FROM CANADA NEW CALLING FEATURES - VOICEMAIL and more... RESIDENTIAL PROMO BUNDLE SOVERNET WILL SOON OFFER DOMAIN NAMES, FOR LESS!   SECTION III —Promos/Specials/Discounts PROMOS PAGE RESIDENTIAL PROMO BUNDLE   SECTION IV—Network News   SECTION I —New Hours, New Locations EXPANDED CALL CENTER HOURS          8:00 AM To 8:00 PM Monday Through Saturday! WE'VE HEARD YOU! Many times! We've reorganized our support, sales, and accounts services under the name of "The Call Center." One number gets you to the Sales and Accounts folks, our Internet Support Team, or to our trouble report lines. The Call Center can help you with your account questions about billing, adding/removing services, new service & product offerings, Internet account configuration questions, dialup problems, phone outage reports—in short, just about everything to do with your account(s). Our new hours are 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM Monday through Saturday. The trouble report lines for phone repair or dialup access-number issues are available anytime, with messages picked up immediately by our Network Monitors who are on duty 24/7. Please continue to use the 'support' line (press 1) during expanded calling hours for tech support issues Call toll-free (877) 877-2120 and select your destination from the short menu. top NEW COVERAGE AREAS FOR BROADBAND AND VOICE    —We're On The Move...       ...and now in Bellows Falls, Manchester, and Middlebury!— Installation of our equipment in additional local Telephone Central Offices continues. As of April 15, 2002, Integrated Telephone/Internet Services & Bundles are available in the following locations: Barre, Bellows Falls, Bennington, Brattleboro, Burlington, Essex Junction, Manchester Center, Middlebury, Montpelier, Rutland and Winooski. We now offer our full range of Local & Long Distance phone services, and business and personal DSL services in these 11 locations; with Quechee, St Johnsbury, White River Junction and Woodstock set to come online in the following weeks. Putney is slated to be turned up by summer's end. And new Business DSL POPS are scheduled to open in St Albans and Randolph in the upcoming months. To see a map of where various services are available, go to http://www.sover.net/services/ and click the "Services Locator" button. top   SECTION II—Voice and Data Services News SPAM CONTROLS! No-one likes to be barraged by the unsolicited junk email called "spam." And, oh boy!—have we ever heard from you on this one! We've had some filtering on our email servers for quite a while, but given the volume of mail passing through the servers (sometimes surpassing one million messages a day) and the amount that is truly legitimate, mass filtering has to be done with a light touch. For several months we've been investigating and testing various filtering systems. It's been a while in coming, but we have found a solution that works very well. Over the past several weeks, many of you and many of our staff have agreed to test our new Spam Controls and with your help we've gotten them ready for release to any of you who wish to take advantage of them. All customers may email addresses. Just go to the Spam Control page via the Web Email interface (www.sover.net/tools, click the "Login" tab), and log in. The Controls require that you have your browser set to allow cookies, and have javascript enabled. The cookies are for authentication purposes only, and expire (are deleted) promptly at the close of each session Read the Spam Control FAQ (http://www.sover.net/support/faq/c4a.html) to get a sense of how the Controls work and what configuration changes you can make. Note that, these filters are unlikely to be 100% effective and you may wish to configure your email software's filter capabilities as well, if you haven't already. We recommend trying the default settings for a few days before adjusting, but don't be surprised if, periodically, you need to re-tweak as spammers evolve new methods to evade filtering. It's always a game of "catch up!" Happy spam filtering! top MORE SERVER SPACE FOR YOUR MONEY. Effective May 1, we are doubling the amount of any *extra* server space that you purchase. Additional server space is now available in blocks of 10MB for $5.00/month. Those of you already purchasing additional space on any of the servers will now automatically have double the amount of additional space you had previously (i.e. 10MB rather than 5MB for the same $5.00 charge). If you find that this provides you with more or less space than you now need, you can change the amount in blocks of 10MB/$5.00 as well. The amount of extra server space is easily adjusted, either upward or downward, via the "Manage Server Space" menu button behind the Web Email interface. Simply go to http://www.sover.net/tools/ and click on the LOGIN tab at the top of the page. Log in with your username and password. When you are adjusting the extra space, make sure that you've selected the server you really want to adjust, that is: web, email, shell, or webhost. top REMOTE DIAL-IN FROM CANADA Traveler's now can take advantage of the Remote Dial-In Service to access the Internet, via their SoVerNet account, from anywhere in Canada, as well as from anywhere in the contiguous (lower 48) United States. The cost of Remote Dial-in service from Canada is the same as calling from the US. If you are interested in signing up for Remote Dial-In for use in your travels, a printable form is on the web at http://www.sover.net/docs/formslist.html . Alternatively, email sales@sover.net, or...take advantage of our new expanded service and support hours and call us: (877) 877-2120. More info: <http://www.sover.net/services/services.html#rdi> top NEW CALLING FEATURES —VOICEMAIL and more... Voice messaging service (VMX) is now available for both residential and business customers. Multiple lines may be mapped to a single voicemailbox, and messages may be stored for up to 30 days, after which they are deleted on a first-in/first-out basis as new messages arrive. We have set up local exchange retrieval numbers throughout our service areas in the State so that you can retrieve your messages remotely via a local call. In addition to VoiceMail, we've added several other new features. Find out more by visiting the Residential or Business Voice Services pages: Residential: <http://www.sover.net/services/rezvoice.html> Business: <http://www.sover.net/services/bizvoice.html> top RESIDENTIAL PROMO BUNDLE Residential customers in all locations should check out the special introductory Bundle we have put together: DSL/Local Calling/Long Distance---Free setups, free modem, (at least) 10% monthly discount on service and usage! It's a great deal if it's available in your area (DSL is distance sensitive to the local Central Office). See the details on our "Promos Page" by going to http://www.sover.net/services and clicking on the "Special Promos" link in the left-hand column. top SOVERNET WILL SOON OFFER DOMAIN NAMES, FOR LESS! We have been accepted as a reseller for OpenSRS domain registrations, and will soon be able to offer you domain names at a discount from the Network Solutions pricing. OpenSRS is an authorized Domain Registrar, just like Network Solutions or Register.Com. Because we can do volume buying at wholesale prices, we can offer you some significant savings. Before long, we'll have an online purchase form, with a secure transaction site via AuthorizeNet so you can "do it yourself." You'll also be able to login to a Domain Management area where you can directly manage your domain information. Our goal is to have this available by the 1st of June. The order form link will be found on the Hosting information page, or through the Tools page. top   SECTION III—Promos/Specials/Discounts PROMOS PAGE This, no doubt, borders on blatant self-promotion, and in some respects it is. However—it also is a response to another complaint we've heard, more than once, which is that you can't find where our "specials" are listed. Well, we don't have a lot of them—we try to keep pricing as low as possible. However, we do have various discounts that are always available, and periodically we do have a promotion. You can check to see that you're getting any discounts you're eligible for, and to see if we have a promo that interests you by going to http://www.sover.net/services and clicking on the "Special Promos" link in the left-hand column. top RESIDENTIAL PROMO BUNDLE Expanded from our late winter promotion, this has been a great deal for you, and for us. Personal High-Speed Internet (ADSL/G.Lite), with Local & Long Distance phone service—keep your current number, use DSL and voice at the same time (no more waiting to connect, won't tie up your phone!). The special promotion offers you a free DSL modem, free setup of the DSL and the phone service, and a 10% discount on service and usage every month. Check it out on the Promos Page or contact us by email to sales@sover.net or phone (877) 877-2120---save over $300! If you live in the Bellows Falls, Burlington, Rutland, or St Johnsbury area, you can also sign up at one of our retail locations (see: http://www.sover.net/docs/retail.html. top SECTION IV— Network News "Network" is not quite accurate; it's "networkS" now that SoVerNet has become a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier—another name for "local phone company"). We have two networks, one for voice and broadband/DSL, and one for Dialup. The Voice/DSL Network is running well in eleven locations throughout the State, and we are adding equipment to Verizon Central Offices in five more locations in the upcoming weeks. Please see the Section I of this newsletter, or the Service Locator on our web page for more information. We, of course, have had a Dialup Network for seven years now, and some have asked why we wanted to change anything on our rock-solid network, at all. The answer is: we have to in order to survive in this fast-changing industry. Without broadband services, we'd be left behind, as you demand more bandwidth and more speed. Even those dialup customers who are happy with modems that connect anywhere from 25-50k, are using the Internet more than ever before. We needed a lot of bandwidth, and we needed to control our costs. So we built a second network for voice and broadband traffic, and embarked on an extensive upgrade of our original Dialup Network to integrate into our new structure---we hired more engineers and switch technicians, bought switching equipment and cutting edge software, tested for months and then deployed slowly, area by area. Upgrading the dialup network meant that we had to continue providing plenty of ports (modems) to handle calls. We have always paid very close attention to "peak usage" to be sure we do not oversell our network. We now have peak usage of 3000 ports, and we have 5000 ports available--a very comfortable margin (and we never stop watching). We also made certain we would always have nearly double the bandwidth we need. In 1995, we opened with one 56k line, and it wasn't long before we upgraded to a T1 (24 56k lines) to accommodate our growing customer base. Over the next years, we grew to a dozen T1's. Next was a DS3 (28 T1's), and then multiple DS3's. And now, with customers using the Internet more often and requiring more bandwidth when they do, we have upgraded to OC3's (3 DS3's each). Very soon we will provide redundancy with multiple OC3's to the Internet. Seven years ago, we wouldn't have believed it. Many of you enjoy our somewhat laid-back lifestyle (compared to more urban states), but others of you have a real need for speed on the Internet. We have addressed that need by expanding to Public Exchange Points throughout the country for direct connectivity to other ISP's and telephone companies. This type of interconnection is referred to as "peering" and allows more direct access with fewer path segments ("hops"). Fewer hops means information moves faster. We've also added two Akamai Servers that reduce response time on the web with caching technology. They update information whenever it is new, and use cached information between updates for faster downloads. While everyone knows that DSL is fast, there's fast...and then there's faster. Installing our equipment in Verizon Central Offices and becoming a CLEC means that we can now offer DSL over a more reliable, faster circuit than was previously available to us. These new circuits allow us to eliminate one leg of the circuit for simplicity and speed. And while we were at it, we substituted DS3's for T1's, to backhaul traffic from the Central Offices to the Internet, for—you guessed it—more speed. These changes, mandated by the need to survive as a locally-owned business, are behind both the new networks, Voice/DSL and Dialup. As you've seen, and as we've addressed via recent announcements, the Dialup Network has presented some challenging problems in its integration with our 3Com cutting-edge ("bleeding-edge" as some refer to it) software and our interconnection with the Verizon network. Our engineers are working with engineers from both of these companies, and they are diagnosing and resolving the problems. They have built work-arounds for some of the most resistant problems, and our entire staff has burned-the-midnight-oil in an effort to report and correct problems before they interfere with service. Not always successfully, but successes are increasing. We have long-range plans to provide Vermonters and our neighbors in Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire, with a cohesive network that allows us all to work efficiently while enjoying the lifestyle of these beautiful surroundings. And we know we owe you—for your patience, your support, your reports of problems, and your pride in us. If you wish to review our recent announcements detailing the Dialup Network problems, and the corrective actions taken, you'll find them at http://www.sover.net/notices/archived/4-02-dialupreport.html. We will continue sending updates until we can announce that the problems are fully resolved. And we will continue building both of our networks until we are everywhere you want us to be—and we can have a glitch or two without anyone feeling it. ------------------------------------------------------------- Last, but never least... We wish you another warm, sunny and Happy Spring. -SoVerNet Staff top