Hillcountry Network Systems

Happy New Year

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2010 in review

This past year our effort has been more in "hardening" the system more than expanding infrastructure. We have seen an increase of the downloading of full length movies by our customers, making our network almost as much of an entertainment source as an information source.

This additional data flow demand has caused us to make a large increase of the bandwidth we purchase through which our customer data flows. We have had a project with AT&T underway since mid 2010 which will give us a 5 X increase in the size of our "Pipe" to the internet. This project required fiber optic cable to be run down Hamilton pool road and up to our central hub. This project was enabled by the growth of housing developments along that road and the cost sharing with home phone service and home DSL internet for the newer subdivisions on Hamilton Pool road.

This fiber project and our access to greatly increased speed to the internet is currently set to be finished late this year or very early 2011. To provide relief from the over use of watching movies and internet videos we brought three Business Grade cable modem lines into the system. They handle overflow traffic, typically between 6 PM and midnight.

We will be spreading the cost of the new faster infrastructure across those who choose to use our network as a movie channel by offering some slightly modified classes of service when the new bandwidth comes on line ( around the first of 2011 ). This will be done by offering service at near the current cost for those who download less data -- which would be the case for those who do not watch internet movies or videos. Those of you who have requested higher speed in the past year will be assumed to want less restrictions on the amount of data you can download, indicating that you would like to be able to watch movies and videos. With the base level non-movie watching service you will have a faster speed than the 512K contracted speed up to the point where you download a certain quota amount of data. Then your speed will drop to the contracted 512K speed

With the movie watcher class of service you will be given a much larger block of data quota to download before dropping your speed to the 512K level. You can see the options in our service rates table, elsewhere on this web site.

The other change in rate structure is that we will accept real US silver dollars as payment for service. So to avoid higher prices driven not by increased cost, but by depreciation of the US paper currency, you might wish to stock up on silver dollars ( real money ). As you know paper money currency is actually known as FRN's or Federal Reserve Notes. When we began in 2001 accepting payment in US FRNs it took less than 14 FRNs to buy a silver dollar. Today it takes 28 FRNs to buy a silver dollar. So the FRNs that you pay today are worth about half what they were worth when we first set our price structure in FRNs. So even as we spend on improving our infrastructure and paying for more bandwidth, the real driver of our rate increases is the Federal Reserve policy of printing money with what they call Quantitative Easing, as opposed to what they would call counterfitting if we did it.

Finally, I am still passionate about defending the Constitution and restoring the proper relation of the government to We the People of the nation. So feel free to email me and we can develop some email community of local support for freedom, liberty, and personal rights.