Important Newsletter from Midcoast Internet Solutions July 23, 2003 0. New Perks When Referring a Friend 1. New "Press @ MIS" Page 2. Solar Powered Web Hosting 3. Other Web Hosting Changes 4. Wireless Equipment on Sale! 5. DSL Changes 6. Colocation 7. Old Liberty Number Going, Going... Quite a bit of technological change has been underway at Midcoast Internet Solutions and we want to make you aware of some of the things which have been accomplished. 0. New Perks When Referring a Friend For years, MIS has had a policy whereby if you refer a friend to MIS, you can earn $20 off your bill. By looking at our sign up forms, far and away most new customers say they heard about MIS from a friend. Still, most of those new members never take the time to mention which friend referred them to us. So, we're making some changes. First, when a new customer says that a friend referred them, the MIS staffer will make sure to point out the MIS Referral Form that is in every sign up packet. After a month or so goes by, the staff in our Damariscotta office call all new customers to see how things are going. If they see "friend" checked off in the referrer box on the sign up form, but no referral slip, they'll bring it to their attention again. Next, we'll send a post card to the referrer, to let them know that someone signed up who was referred by them, and that we at MIS appreciate that. Then, every month or two, we'll have a drawing. Every one who refered a customer within that time frame, and who had the friend turn in the referral slip, will be put into a drawing for a cool prize! The first prize given away will be a $25 gift certificate to The Pastry Garden (www.pastry-garden.com) on Main Street in Rockland. ($25 buys a ton of pastry. Well, not an actual ton, but you get the idea.) If your business would like to donate a prize for the drawing, we'll include your name and description of your business in our newsletter, and also post in on our new "Press @ MIS" website. 1. New "Press @ MIS" Page Midcoast Internet prides itself on being a local company. And as such, we have things that we would like to share with our friends and neighbors. For example, when we give away our scholarship every year, where should we post that news? Where should we talk about the improved referral program? Where can we post pictures of Cameron's new baby? Well, now we'll be posting that kind of thing on our new "Press @ MIS" page, available at http://press.midcoast.com . Be sure to check it out often, and see what kinds of cool things are happening with your truly local ISP. 2. Solar Powered Web Hosting MIS has been using power from the sun to operate island-based wireless Internet repeater sites for a couple of years and has very practical experience in DC power. (Experience few ISPs have knowledge about.) We have chosen to apply these skills in providing a new web hosting alternative. Our research has found only one other company in the US that provides the service of solar powered web hosting and they have had minor fame as a result of their work. They are in the south, we are in the far northeastern corner of our country, providing more of a challenge to us. We were surprised at the lack of supply for this service! Solar web hosting is not intended as something every MIS customer will be seeking. While the sun isn't too warm here, the enthusiasm for this type of system is. There are a surprising number of people in our part of the state who choose to not use power from the utility. This offering may meet their needs for web hosting. To provide this at our data center, we have installed solar panels, additional wiring, fuses, charge controller electronics, 1000 AH array of sealed batteries, and a special lower power consumption DC powered server. We are not converting existing web hosting customers to this special service automatically. If you are interested in this service, contact Jim or Cam at our office (594-8277), or visit http://hosting.midcoast.com. 3. Other Web Hosting Changes: Due to larger capacity of our drives, backup systems, and networks, we are able to increase the disk space and transfer volume allocated in some of our popular web hosting services. In the Domain Basic plan, the disk space increases from 20 megs to 30, and the transfer allowance goes from two gigs to three. In our Full Virtual Domain plan, disk space increases from 60 megs to 80, and transfer jumps from four gigs to six. What does this mean to you in layman's terms? It means you get more web space for more pages, and more people can visit those pages. 4. Wireless Equipment On Sale! Charles was able to get a special buy on a slew of wireless radios. For the next 50-100 customers (depending on interest), a wireless radio will be $100 off regular rate. That means the standard basic wireless package is just $395 with a one year commitment! And, we'll still break that initial fee into four interest free payments for you. Wireless Internet has never been cheaper! 5. DSL changes Our DSL coverage area within the Tidewater Telecom service area has increased again. We are pleased to offer broadband in the following new areas: South Hope, Buzzel Hill, Walpole, Riverview, Appleton, and Cobb Town. This is in addition to the following communities which have had DSL service from Midcoast Internet Solutions. These include Lincolnville, Damariscotta, West Neck, Bremen, New Harbor, South Bristol, Union, Biscay, Bristol Mills, Hope, Nobleboro, Back Meadow, Sheepscot, and Moxie Cove. If you are in another town with another phone company, inquire about the availability of our high speed wireless access for your broadband needs. Maps of our DSL coverage area are online at http://www.midcoast.com/mis/dsl. 6. Colocation. In the Internet business, colocation is a service where you bring your servers to the internet instead of bringing the internet to your servers. MIS has provided colocation quietly and reliably for a few years. We provide electrical power, grounding, air conditioning, and reliable broad bandwidth network connections to your computers in our physically secure data center. This enhances reliability compared to bringing a high speed connection to your office--where anything can happen. For $150/month, you can put your computer in our data center and not worry about power, temperature, people tripping on cables, or squirrels chewing on power wires at the CMP substation. Server Administrators sleep better at night as a result. Quantity discounts are available for people with lots of servers. We will put your server on a UPS (backed up by our sizeable diesel generator) and it will be connected to the Internet with a fast, simple, and reliable ethernet cable. From there, it goes fiber-optic to our Internet backbones and to our local networks. To get a more reliable connection from your server to the Internet, you'd likely have to drive your server to another state. This gives you most of the same benefits MIS gains from having a data center for our servers and telecommunications equipment. Typical customer uses for colocation are situations where virtual domain webhosting doesn't provide the software choices or flexibility required. Some businesses that colocate are programmers who want to test internet software; small webhosting and design companies; custom database oriented websites used by businesses; and situations where security dictates that the website be on a machine all by itself. If you are interested in colocation, please visit http://hosting.midcoast.com/colo.html and discuss it with Jim or Cam at our office (594-8277). 7. Old Liberty Number Going, Going... The days of the analog modem have been gone a long time. Some of us remember the days of 9,600. Heck, some of us remember 300 baud! But for the past four years at least, 56k has been the standard modem speed. MIS maitained some older analog lines in some of the more rural areas--areas that traditionally had poor phone lines. We wish to thank Liberty Graphics for providing us a spot to have modems in Liberty. They've been great to work with. But with our state wide 1-500 phone service as well as 56k local exchange number, use on our analog lines has been dwindling. Many providers' 1-500 numbers do not work in independent phone company territory at all. MIS's 1-500 numbers (plural!) work very well from the independent phone companies' territory. The analog lines for Rockland, Belfast, Camden, and Thomaston were removed in 1999. The analog line in Damariscotta (563-6644) has been removed this past spring. Next on the list is the analog Liberty phone number. If you're using 589-3380 as your primary dial-up number, we need for you to change it. Our first recommendation would be to try 589-3003, our 56k digital line in Liberty. Our 1-500 numbers are avaiable to you as well. If you need help changing the number, please give us a call at 563-8563, or 594-8277, and we'll help you through it. Or, you can see our online help page on the subject, at http://www.midcoast.com/2help/windows/changephone.html