Summer has finally hit with long hot days and nights, and a lot is afoot here in Inspireland.

Consumer Magazine has released their latest ISP survey, and yet again we have topped the list as the best in the country, thanks to those of you that put in a good word for us. This year was interesting as we have always been at the top with 2 or 3 of the other mid-sized ISPs, but this year we are up there on our own, over 10% higher than the next closest with over 98% customer satisfaction.

Flatrate Internet changes

Before now, I have always struggled to understand how the larger ISPs can offer flat rate, and still offer good service, as the price point was never there for us. But with a few changes in the market recently, and our continued growth, we have managed to get to a new level of buying power, and we are now offering flat rate on our fibre and copper based broadband plans.

Anyone who was on a 500Gbyte, 1000Gbyte or 2000Gbyte plan, will now be on a flat rate plan at the 500Gbyte price when they roll, at the end of their current monthly billing cycle.

Our flat rate plans have a fair use policy that is worded as follows:

“Fair Use Policy

Inspire Net has a fair use policy on its flat rate plans. We define this as a situation where, in our opinion, the cost of providing the service(s) greatly exceeds the price that the service is being sold for. In these situations, we reserve the right to contact you to discuss alternative options, or to exit the service early, by giving you 30 days' notice and we will not enforce any early disconnect penalty. Any charges for hardware not returned will still stand as per your contract with Inspire Net.

We currently measure our fair use policy level at an amount of traffic per month that is 10 times what an average user on a flat rate plan uses. As of the date of these terms and conditions, the traffic level that we would deem to be non-viable and to initiate a discussion was 3000Gbytes.”

Jobs at Inspire

As we continue to grow we are on the lookout for a few new staff here at Inspire Net, we are currently seeking someone for the helpdesk and a person to look after small to medium business sales. If you know anyone that may suit this role, please forward on the advertisements to them.

Helpdesk agent position is advertised here
SMB Sales Consultant position is advertised here

New Staff at Inspire

We have Sonny who is new on our helpdesk and we are busy teaching him the Inspire way, and next week we welcome back Karina to Inspire who has taken the role of lnspire Brand and Marketing Manager. Karina used to work in our web design company through until 2009, and it’s great to have her back on board.

VOIP changes

Many of you use our VOIP (voice over IP) service, to get your phone line delivered at home. This is a service where we put your phone over your internet connection using your current phone number (or a new one) and its much cheaper than a traditional phone line.

Up until now our $15/month phone line came with 500 free local minutes and you paid for your toll calls. For anyone on the $15 plan, when your next monthly plan roll over occurs, you will now get 2000 minutes per month to any New Zealand landline.

Our $40/month phone line previously came with 2000 minutes anywhere in New Zealand, and for anyone on this plan, when your next monthly plan roll over occurs, you will now get unlimited calling to New Zealand landlines, 1000 minutes to our Top 50 countries (Aussie, Canada, China, UK, USA etc.), and 100 minutes to New Zealand mobiles.

Metrolan Wireless Customers

We are finalising testing of our new radio equipment and have started live testing with customers now. Our goal for our wireless customers is to increase the speed of your internet connections, and fix any outstanding congestion issues that have been occurring. We have completed a massive amount of upgrades over the last 6 weeks while the weather has been better, with a lot more to come yet. We have over 270 wireless towers around Inspireland, and it’s a huge program of work to upgrade these, but we are well underway now. We will not be offering flat rate plans on the wireless network at this stage, but our goal is to get more consistent throughput for those of you watching Netflix and the likes.

We have completed several new towers since Christmas covering Pukeokahu, Waimiro and Pa Valley, and we have many more towers coming online in the next four weeks to cover Te Kumu Station, 3 more towers in Ngamatapouri to cover the rest of the valley, Mangapapa Road and also Makakahi Road. These are all pretty remote areas as we continue to roll out wireless in partnership with communities who don’t really have any choice for good speed, reliable broadband.

As always, if you have any feedback on Inspire, good or bad, or any products or services you think we should offer, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Regards

James Watts
Founder, Inspire Net