Message from James - Owner
 

Hi there!
Can you believe it's time for a Christmas newsletter already!?
If the current weather is anything to go by, we may be in for one of those long hot Summers again finally, let's just hope for all of our farmer friends out there that we didn't use up all our rain allocation over Winter... It's not been long since the last newsletter, so just a pretty quick round-up this time.

Firstly, we have our team Christmas function on Saturday, 16th December so we'll be closing up the Helpdesk a bit earlier at 3pm, so our whole team can celebrate the year together, and we'll be back with you on Sunday 17th December as per usual. Don't panic, we have a network guru ready just in case anything major happens to the network, and our function is at a location well connected to the Inspire Network too.

In our last almost monthly, we included a customer survey. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to send us your feedback. We had a huge response and overall the feedback was very positive. We've taken all of your feedback on board, gone through all of the individual responses and made contact directly where we thought appropriate. For the most common questions, we've put together a Q&A and tried to answer them as best as we can, below.
As always, if there's anything you'd like to know that's not covered, feel free to contact us and we'll do our best to help you out.

By completing the survey you were entered into the draw to win $500 credit on your account. Congratulations to our winner Willie Bryant. Enjoy that free internet!

Q&A time!

I never know exactly which areas you cover or don't cover. Eg: do you cover Auckland? It's hard when trying to recommend you to friends who live out of the Manawatu.
We service the whole country on the Chorus copper network, most of the North Island and Marlborough on the fibre networks, and Whanganui, Rangitikei, Manawatu, Tararua and nearby regions on our wireless network. We're currently working on a way to make this a lot easier to find out through our website too, so watch this space. In the meantime, the best bet is to give us a call and talk to one of our friendly helpdesk agents.

Would you consider providing mobile/cellular coverage? If not, why?
We would love to offer mobile if we could. We cannot get any radio spectrum to build our own, and the big Telco's currently require a minimum commitment of $250,000 per month before we could use their network. Every 3-6 months we try to engage the big mobile players to see if they have anything we could offer our customers, but we have not yet found a solution that makes any financial sense.

Would like to see wireless speed increased and the cap increased
As most of you will know from the previous newsletter, Inspire Net has secured $1.7 Million of grant funding towards upgrading approx. 1,550 of our most remote end users. We will be contributing at around 2.5 to 1 on that funding to upgrade all of our end users (approx. 4,500) who are not going to be covered by UFB2, or the surprise announcement of UFB2+. We will be upgrading all of our wireless users from our current 5Mbit service to a 25Mbit service over the next 4 years, which will be capable of running streaming services such as Netflix, Skype for Business and the like, and moving any that have fibre available to the fibre network as soon as it's ready for them.

We are currently working through the specifics of our wireless network upgrade, and we plan to use as many local businesses as possible to support our upgrade, and believe in investing locally to achieve this wherever possible.

Keep following us on Facebook to stay up-to-date about the things Inspire are sponsoring and working on in our communities, and stay tuned over the coming months to get updates on where we're at with the RBI2 rollout. Thanks for all of your support, this is a win for all of us.

Can you stop all of the spam coming through my Inspire Net email account?
Stopping SPAM is a bullets and armour fight. Every time we make some new armour, the spammers find a new bullet, and we then make stronger armour and the cycle continues. You can adjust the level of SPAM filtering on the "My Inspire" account interface on our website to a higher level of checking, or to auto delete anything we mark as SPAM rather than having to delete it yourself. Once again, if you would like help to do this, just give our helpdesk a call and we'll be happy to help you through it.

Can you provide a landline option?
We can deliver this over your Internet connection with us. You can keep your old phone number, and also get lots of modern features like voice mail and caller ID on your phone all as part of the standard service. Give our helpdesk a call and ask about our Voice service.

Can you provide a Voice router that's not locked down?
At this stage, we do not offer this as an option. When we previously let customers have access to the voice routers, two of them turned off some security settings and ended up with bills for over $40,000 of calling. By locking down the router and controlling if ourselves, we protect both our customers and ourselves from these potential hacks. We are looking at giving customers access to alter settings via our website in the future, so watch this space.

More consistent Internet without having to re-boot
If you are having to re-boot your router regularly, please contact our helpdesk who can check if there is something wrong with your connection. Residential routers should normally not need to be re-booted very often at all (say every 2 or 3 months). If you are having to re-boot very regularly, it may be a faulty power supply on your router, bad rural power, or a faulty router.

Credit on my account if I get a friend to sign up
This is the kind of promotion that we may look at in the New Year, watch this space.

An unlimited data option
We have a Flat Rate option available. You'll remain at full speed all month and have no data cap to worry about. The connection is covered by our fair use policy. Check out our website for more information about the Flat Rate option. (Excludes Wireless plans at this stage). https://www.inspire.net.nz/products/compare-res.html

Faster installation time for fibre
Inspire Net has a fairly extensive network of our own around Manawatu, and we manage our install timeframes well. With the Government funded LFC's (Local Fibre Companies such as Chorus, Ultrafast, Enable and Northpower) who are rolling out the Government funded fibre network, we have no control over installation times. We submit an order to them and then we just wait in the queue. We have been pushing very hard for improvements in installation times on their networks, in partnership with many of the other ISPs, however it just doesn't seem to be getting better. When a customer signs up for UFB, we place the order and then we are at the mercy of the LFC to deliver, which occurs sometime between 10 days and 2 years at this stage. This makes us look bad, but we have no control over the process, and no amount of lobbying seems to be fixing this, it is an industry wide problem at the moment.

Provide Ultra Fast Fibre
Inspire currently has handovers in place for providing UFB services in Palmerston North, Feilding, Levin, Wanganui, the greater Wellington area, Blenheim, Masterton, Auckland, Gisborne, Napier/Hastings, Paraparaumu, and Whangarei.

Installing fibre into your house or business involves physically connecting a fibre optic cable to your premises from the roadside. This may involve digging a trench, feeding the line through existing ducting or other methods.  Once we have received your fibre application, we'll give you a call to tell you exactly how the installation will proceed and explain everything in detail.
If you'd like to know if fibre is available at your place, give us call.

Movies? Maybe a pay per view type of service?
With Netflix coming to New Zealand, we have opted not to look at streaming options at this stage. We are simply too small to negotiate with the big movie companies to get a reasonable price for our customers.

Helpline for questions about my home entertainment.
What to buy and how to connect up to the internet.
Inspire Net is full of geeks that specialise in most things related to the Internet, and we are happy to help you if we can, by connecting your equipment to our routers, however we are not familiar with every TV or home theatre device, and if you are looking at what to buy, it's better to talk to someone that specialises in home entertainment equipment about your specific needs.

Next up... a bit of an update on RBI2
As we mentioned last time, we have secured some Government funding to upgrade our rural wireless network, and we are well into the planning of this, and starting to roll out upgraded towers now. We have completed our tower at Kumeroa, which was our final test site for our new equipment, and we are now happy our new service will move from 5/1Mbit wireless to 25/5Mbit.

Over the next few weeks we have a shipping container of batteries arriving, along with some big, fast licensed radio backhaul links to feed our towers. In mid January we will be working on completing upgrades for the Kimbolton, Pohangina, Ashhurst, Linton and Shannon areas. Then we will be working from February to June to upgrade our entire Tararua Network (subject to the weather playing ball).

Central Districts Fieldays
As part of the RBI2 initiative, we're gearing up for our first ever site at Central Districts Fieldays 2018. We've got our marquee organised, and we'll be ready to meet you there, and answer your questions! Look out for us at site S36.

We've had a lot on this year and have had some huge achievements along the way.
I would like to thank our team for all the effort they have put in this year. Our people make Inspire Net who we are and without them we wouldn't be so inspired.

Over the Christmas period our helpdesk hours will remain the same as usual, however our front desk reception office will be closed over the stats, and closed earlier in the evening at 5pm in between the stats.

In the quieter times the helpdesk will be working through customer account checks, to check that your account details are correct, make sure there's no better broadband service that you could be upgraded to and offering our voice service. 

Have a happy and safe holiday, and from the Inspire Net team to you and your family, thanks so much for your support, and we hope you have a very Merry Christmas.
See you in 2018!

Christmas competition.
Plus, we couldn't have a Christmas email, without giving you the opportunity to win something to keep you going over the Christmas season. So, click the link below, enter your details and be in to win an Inspire Net Christmas hamper! Plus while, filling out the form, you can listen to our new Inspire Net jingle. Enjoy and good luck!
Inspire Net customers only. Winner drawn and announced December 18th.
https://www.inspire.net.nz/christmas