Wow, the New Year certainly seems to be rolling around fast - our Almost Monthly newsletter seems to be turning into about Quarterly.

As always there has been a lot happening at Inspire, and this newsletter is just a few of the highlights.

This month I was awarded an Honorary Associate Award from UCOL for services to the community. As any of you who know me will understand, I am not a big fan of heading out in public where I am the centre of attention, but I chose to accept this award as I love what UCOL does in our community, and am a big believer in supporting people who are working their way up the ladder of success. It was a pleasure to sit in on the greater UCOL graduation ceremony and see all the upcoming talent that’s coming out into the workforce.

Consumer Magazine released their ISP customer survey at Christmas, and we have rated at the top again with 99% satisfaction, so many thanks to those of you who voted for us. I would love to hear from you about how we could do better - we have always rated very highly in this survey but I am sure there are many things we could do better. So if you have a suggestion, please email me.

Inspire Rural Wireless

Since the last newsletter we have built several more towers in and around our region including:

• Wanganui - No 2 and Union Lines covering Okoia to Fordell, Ruatangata Road near Whangaehu
• Rangitikei - Galpins Road, Marton (part of a larger project underway to get coverage around the Marton rural surrounds)
• Manawatu - Sky Farm at the top end of the Pohangina Valley
• Tararua / Central Hawkes Bay - Bush Road Porangahau, Donghi Road and also Garfield Road near Ormondville
• Wairarapa - Mataikona near Castlepoint

Upcoming new towers in the planning stage at the moment are for the Hunterville - Turakina Road, Paekakariki Hill Road, a large project of towers for Norsewood / Takapau and the rural surrounds, and Seafield Road in Wanganui.

We have a coverage map on our website that we keep updated fairly regularly. If you are in an area with no coverage but are still keen on a connection, give us a call and register your interest. Or find 10 neighbours and send us a list and we will put you on our community champion program for getting a tower in your community. We regularly look at areas where people have registered their interest to see if we can come up with a solution for them.

Inspire's Facebook page

If you live on Facebook, or are someone who has Facebook to keep in touch with the kids / grandchildren, why not Like us on our page.
We don't inundate our page with updates, but we do regular updates on great things happening, the odd photo of some of the places we work, and also any major outages affecting the network.

Find our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/InspireNetLimited

Inspire Voice

Our Voice over IP platform has been completed and we are now offering phone services to our wireless and fibre customers (we don’t deliver Voice over IP over copper connected broadband). This allows customers on our wireless or fibre (both Inspire fibre and the Government UFB fibre) to have their phone delivered over the internet - far cheaper than a standard copper phoneline. You can keep your same phone number and move it over to being delivered over our Voice over IP platform for as little as $15/month, as well as getting cheaper calling rates than a standard copper line. If you are interested in our Voice plans, take a look on the wireless or fibre sections of our website, or give us a call. We also have some great packages coming online soon for small businesses at around $99/month for 5 phone / 10 extensions, including a virtual PABX where you can manage your calls. If you are interested in this service drop us an email and we will contact you about the services available for businesses.

Inspire Fibre

Inspire has a substantial fibre network of our own, not only in Palmerston North but stretching from Taihape to Palmerston North to Pahiatua, and Norsewood to Masterton. We welcome back Iain Waugh to our team, who will now be responsible for the day-to-day running of our fibre network, planning expansions and building connections. Our fibre is aimed at businesses and schools who want high capacity services, and we also use it for sponsoring connectivity for the CCTV network in Palmerston North, Pahiatua and the upcoming Dannevirke CCTV network, where we provide connectivity at no charge for these kind of community based projects, as well as enabling us to build and expand out the Inspirefreewifi network.

Government Ultrafast Broadband program (UFB)

The Government backed fibre network being rolled out by Chorus, Ultrafast and Enable Networks has continued on passing houses and businesses and we have connected around 500 people up to this fibre network now. With this new network, ISPs like us have to connect in each separate area to be able to offer services. This involves substantial investment in equipment and connectivity. At this stage Inspire Net is offering services over the Government backed network in Wanganui, Feilding, Palmerston North, Levin, Wellington, Blenheim, and we are underway building our own fibre in to Masterton to offer fibre services in Masterton later in the year.

Posted Invoice Fee

With the constant increase in price of postage, coupled with the constant competition in pricing of Internet services, Inspire is introducing a fee of $3 including GST for posted invoices after 1 May 2014.

We have introduced Direct Debits, and have always had the option of emailed invoices for our customers and we encourage you to have your monthly invoice delivered by email. If you would like to change your invoice to being emailed to you, give our Helpdesk a call on 0800 484 363. We will also include a small note detailing this in any invoices posted out over the coming month for customers that don't get a chance to read our newsletters.

Regards

James Watts
Founder, Inspire Net