Less than four weeks until Christmas, it looks like this will be my last Almost Monthly for the year. As always there has been lots happening around here lately.
We have been training some new staff on our Helpdesk, Jeff and Jimmy, and they have now stepped up into full time service, please go easy on them as they learn their way around Inspire and their work supporting our customers.

Inspire Christmas Function – Helpdesk will be closed

Here at Inspire Net we only shut for Christmas Day and for our annual staff social function. On Saturday December 7th, we will be shutting the helpdesk at 12 noon so that we can bus all the staff away for an afternoon of adventure.
As always, we will have a “volunteer” on call, from our network team, to ensure that the engine room continues to work for you all, and our Helpdesk team will be back on deck from 8am on Sunday morning if you need them.

Christmas Hours for the Inspire Office

With the exception of Christmas Day and our social function, the Inspire helpdesk team works right through the break on our standard 8am-10pm hours, however our front office and reception will not be open on the public holidays.

UFB (that fibre stuff the Government is building)

Inspire has commissioned our equipment for UFB in Levin, so we can now offer high speed fibre plans in the following cities / towns where the Government fibre rollout is happening: Palmerston North, Feilding, Wanganui, Levin, Wellington, Blenheim.
If you live in one of these areas and have had Chorus / Ultrafast contractors digging down your street and are keen on getting onto the fibre network, give us a call. We are also working on getting equipment in to the Masterton Exchange, with the aim to start offering these fibre services in Masterton by March 2014.

Inspire Rural Wireless

New towers in and going since my last Almost Monthly include Rangiwahia Township, Porangahau Beach and Parikino Village, with upcoming repeaters for Matakona and also just north of Marton in the Galpins Rd, Ferns Flats area.
We have many additional community repeaters in the pipeline in partnership with communities, so keep an eye on our coverage map at http://www.inspire.net.nz/products/coverage.html, or if there is a group of people in your area that want to connect, get a list of neighbours together and send it through and we will see if we can connect you.
We have a Community Champion program where communities looking for connectivity in their area can contact us to look at options if there are 10 or so houses interested. Check http://www.inspire.net.nz/help/community-champions.html for more details.

Adobe User / Password database got hacked

Adobe (the people who make Acrobat that most people use for viewing PDF files) had their user password database hacked, and 152 Million username / password details were stolen. This list of users and passwords (the passwords are still encrypted) was published to the Internet recently and included several hundred Inspire users email addresses and their encrypted password.
We will be following up with a separate email today to users that we found on the list suggesting they log in to our billing system and change their passwords if they used the same password for the Adobe site as they use for their Inspire account. Inspire will never ask for your password or login details by email like all the nasty scams that come by email, but this email will inform you about what has happened and that you may need to change your password in our billing system (or anywhere else that you may have used the same password as the Adobe site).

Regards

James Watts
Founder, Inspire Net