Midcoast Internet Solutions Spring 2008 Newsletter. Many important news items follow! 0) Credit Cards 1) Dialup Changes 2) Accelerator Changes 3) Spots 4) New Staff 5) New backup service 6) New wireless locations 7) Web based FTP 8) Webpage refresh 0) Hannaford related Credit Card Problems. Many customers have been calling us to change their payment method or card information as a result of this. We prefer to use credit card over printed bills due to the rising costs of postage and the accuracy and speed of processing. If you change cards as a preventative measure or because of Hannaford related fraud, let us know what the new card information is prior to billing. We'd like to know before the 10th of the month, so we can bill with the proper payment method. If your credit card isn't working when we bill on the 17th, you will be switched to postage billing, even if that is not your desired method of payment. 1) Dialup changes As the heaviest users of dialup have transitioned to broadband Internet services, there is capacity to spare in the dialup system. As such, we can change from our 300 hour policy to unmetered without causing any busy signals or related problems. We had not been enforcing any 300 hour limits for quite a while, so this is a very minor change for us. We had previously permitted multiple simultaneous logins, but that will not be permitted with unmetered service. There are also two more changes with dialup written below: 2) Midcoast Internet Accelerator The Accelerator service has been working well for quite some time. It does more than just accelerate your dialup surfing; it offers free ad blocking, parental control, spyware blocking, and anti-virus tools. We used to charge a small monthly fee for this service, but are now making it available at no charge to our customers. That's right. If you want Accelerator, go to our midcoast.com website, sign up, and download it, and we'll get you setup without charge. If you have avoided it for economic reasons, there is no longer any excuse to avoid giving it a try. 3) Midcoast.com Spots http://www.midcoast.com/spots/ Any dialup users (this also includes wireless broadband and some DSL customers who have dialup as an included contingency service) now have access to a system we call "Midcoast.com Spots". Utilize Midcoast.com's vast and evolving wireless broadband infrastructure for your portable devices! Midcoast.com Spots service makes Wi-Fi available without charge to most Midcoast.com customers at a growing list of useful "spots" in the Midcoast Maine area. Midcoast.com Spots is a Wi-Fi hotspot addition to our network. It is meant to provide a useful service to our customers with their new Wi-Fi enabled devices when they are out and about away from their normal service locations. Laptops, PDAs, Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and other communications tools now have Wi-Fi built in. Our customers would like to be able to use them reliably outside their home or office, but would like to avoid spending additional money for (or stealing) Wi-Fi to use those devices. It is not a replacement for fixed broadband (Wireless or DSL installed to your home or business). We are well known for our wireless broadband network and competitive DSL options. We have ten years of experience with wireless broadband and DSL - more than anyone around! We provide broadband service to homes and businesses using equipment for that is not Wi-Fi compatible, as those services have demands that Wi-Fi does not meet in areas of scalability, security, reliability, range, or performance. However, Wi-Fi is cheap and useful when used as intended. Midcoast.com Spots provides Wi-Fi Internet access in specific locations deemed most useful by our customers. We have a couple locations up and working already, and will keep adding more over time. Locations will include ferry terminal parking lots, some downtown coverage, and common areas in select locations that would likely have numerous idle MIS customers. 4) New Staff Thank You Art! After many years of service, Art has decided to retire. He took great pleasure in being our "resident codger," and regaling us with his many stories. Thank you, Art, for your work here at MIS! Welcome Charlie! Charlie Plaisted joined the MIS team in the Fall of 2007. He works Tuesday through Thursday in our Rockland office. Charlie brings with him a wide variety of technical skills and is great with people. Welcome Richard! Richard Haskell is no stranger to MIS. He's been working for us as an independent contractor for years, installing wireless sytems. You might also know him as one of the few TV repairmen left in the world, and as the owner of Haskell's TV. We finally decided it would just be easier to put him on staff--and then we could get more work out of him! Welcome Cal! Everyone at Midcoast.com would like to welcome the newest member of our team: Cal Latham. Cal spent 15 or so years at Coastal Communications in Rockport, where he was involved in radio and paging systems. Before that, he was 30 years at IBM. Cal will work part time (Mondays and Fridays) in our Rockland office. 5) New Backup Service. MIS has managed a large number of computers for more than a decade. We have utilized various methods of backup. With thousands of users doing things on our servers, we have frequent need to access backups of files. We have also experienced flooding, lightning, smoke, surges, computer crashes, software problems, and erring humans. MIS has developed a very capable internal system for network based off-site backup to meet our needs. MIS has now taken it a step further, increasing security, user friendliness, and provisioning capabilities so that we can offer the service to customers. We have created this new backup service primarily for our business customers who can use it to keep their data safe from the same threats we all face. We will work with businesses and local computer support businesses to meet your backup needs. For more information, visit https://www.midcoast.com/mis/backup/ 6) New Wireless Sites We have been busy with a variety of projects to expand and enhance our wireless coverage. We now use a new database to track requests and installation work, making the survey and signup process quicker and smoother. We have improved coverage of our highest speed Platinum service at Barret Hill in Union and Hatchet Mountain in Hope. We have the Salt Shed repeater on Islesboro working well, and are using that site to install a repeater on Bluff Road in Northport. This will help serve more of the North part of Islesboro and Northport, as well as provide a faster and redundant link to Belfast. We are also in the process of finishing the construction of two towers in Somerville and have put equipment in Jefferson for servicing the Somerville ConnectME project. After Somerville is finished, we will be focusing on Edgecomb for ConnectME project work there. We will put information on our webpage and let the appropriate local contacts know as soon as ConnectME sites are available for customers. 7) New Web Based FTP http://instant.midcoast.com/ftp/ We have a new piece to our website where you can FTP to the various midcoast.com servers. This is a handy tool that many people find easier to use than common FTP client software one might install on their computer. This is for people uploading/downloading webpages or other files to our servers. We installed it as part of the backup service, but figured out a way to make it useful for everyone that wants it. 8) Web Page refresh The www.midcoast.com webpage will be updated over the next few weeks. The current Midcoast webpage is a comfortable anachronism. The new webpage is much more advanced and useful without being slow or bleeding edge. We have made great effort to be sure it loads quickly and maintains it's usefulness. We have added new and useful things and improved it's ability to convey information. Sometime in April it will replace the current www.midcoast.com page.