Glasgow Residents on the Nice List
10:23 AM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
For those of you who have HD televisions, the good news is that our HD tier of programming is growing by six new channels. They are: Channel 554 - TBS-HD, Channel 555 - CNN-HD, Channel 556 - MSNBC-HD, Channel 557 - CNBC-HD, Channel 560 - Nickelodeon-HD, and Channel 564 - Comedy Central-HD. Along with the new HD channels, all of our nice Digital Tier customers will also be getting eight new DMX music channels.
Oprah Winfrey fans have something coming from St. Nick as well. Just after the first of the year our channel 104 will become OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network).
Our internet customers are on the nice list as well and they will suddenly start seeing even faster internet service at no additional cost. For those customers using our present 2.5 mb service, it will very soon become 3 mb service. For those customers using our faster 5 mb service, they will soon be faster still at 6 mb. These upgrades are just the beginning as further upgrades and other faster speed products will become available a bit later in 2011. HO HO HO!
The most expensive gift that EPB customers have coming to them just after Christmas is Glasgow’s new electric power delivery point at East Glasgow Substation. This is not something you will notice everyday, but it will dramatically improve the reliability and sustainability of our electric power supply in Glasgow for the next several decades. This new $8 million investment will give all of us a redundant power supply in case of failure or damage to our old power delivery substation at Haywood.
Thanks to all EPB customers for being nice and getting recognized as such by the North Pole gang. From all of us at the EPB to all of you folks who we serve, we wish you the Merriest of Christmases and a New Year filled with joy.
Recommended by Local Elves
First of all, we introduced a very large streaming video-over-internet application a few weeks ago when we brought ESPN 3 to our customers. Just last night, when UK played Boston University, we saw a stunning amount of streaming video traffic on our network as many of our customers watched the game via their internet connection on ESPN 3. When folks start using this service and adding video streaming products from Netflix.com and Hulu.com, it is going to require us to dramatically upgrade our network capacity - and we are in the process of doing just that.
Using these streaming video services and some of the new gaming software successfully at your home will also require that you think about upgrading your personal internet connection. Tests in our laboratory find that ESPN 3 and Netflix both work much better using our 5 MB internet service instead of the generic 2.5 MB service. At 5 MB the video does not have to do much buffering, rather, it plays continuously like you are watching a DVD. We have also found that the 5 MB connection is a necessity for viewing HD content over the internet.
The 5 MB connection is $36 per month compared to the $26 that most folks are paying for the 2.5 MB product, but that $10 per month more buys you a lot better performance for the Christmas presents you might be putting under the tree this year. If you are bringing home an Apple TV, one of the new Google TV devices, or any of the many new streaming video appliances, you will not be happy with them unless you also opt for the 5 MB internet service. So, before you open the presents and hook them up, give us a call at 651-8341 to order your higher speed internet service. We can upgrade your service remotely so you won’t have to worry about finding time to meet us at your house.
There is more to this recommendation too. Very soon (perhaps about the same time you open those Christmas gifts), we will be upgrading all of the speeds on our internet services to go even faster! We will also be adding more HD channels for your enjoyment. Christmas time is a big thing for the people of Glasgow who are served by Glasgow EPB. We have gifts coming your way that will bring you additional enjoyment throughout the year, and we aren’t even keeping a list and checking it twice!
The Basketball Talk
Let’s take our annual look at this situation and review how we came to be in this position. First of all, in the very beginning, the University of Kentucky was born as a function of the Morrill Land-Grant Act. This act caused federal land to be granted to the Commonwealth of Kentucky and that land was eventually sold to provide the initial funding for the university. Since then, the people of the Commonwealth have repeatedly stepped up to fund this asset which is owned by the people of Kentucky. The school, its buildings, its brand, its sports teams, and all other assets are owned by we the taxpayer/citizens.
Of course, we all know that many Kentuckians, including a lot of folks in Glasgow, are more concerned with the exploits of UK’s sports teams than the important research taking place in the UK College of Agriculture. In pursuit of success in those sports programs, University of Kentucky has undertaken many expensive projects which must be financed somehow. Our problems come as a result of many years of relentless pursuit of sports excellence and the money required to finance those programs. In particular, we have a problem with the way the UK Athletics Department has been willing to enter into agreements to sell the television rights to this programming to companies that, in turn, demand ridiculous fees and outlandish profits for the rights to view the games they purchase right here in Kentucky.
Remember, at the beginning and end of the day, the sports teams belong to the people of Kentucky. The buildings they practice and play in belong to the people of Kentucky. The faculty and staff that deliver the education of those sports stars is paid for by the people of Kentucky. As a result of these simple facts, we have developed a simple belief – we think that the people of Kentucky should get a special Most Favored Nations rate for access to the games played by our teams. In short, since we are paying for all of the facilities while folks in other states watching these games are generally NOT paying for UK’s buildings and faculty, we think it is fine for them to pay whatever the programming company wants to charge them for the games, but we think we citizens of Kentucky should get them for the price of the taxes we have already submitted!
This seems like a simple matter and a fair solution, right? Well, as yet, no Kentucky legislator has been willing to suggest this solution in the form of a bill. As a result, small cable operators like Glasgow EPB, even though well within the boundary of Kentucky and made up of folks who have already paid for these teams once, are asked to pay about $100,000 per year for the games on Fox Sports South and other newly minted UK basketball game owners. We cannot add these services as premium channels so that only those willing to pay the price get them. No, the aggressive demands of the likes of Fox Sports South mean that we would have to provide the service to all of our customers, and pay for each of those customers, or not distribute the programming at all. So, even though many would gladly pay their portion of this ransom, our customers have repeatedly told us that we should stick by our guns and refuse to pay this rate because it is blatantly unfair and unjust. Just like the movement that is now sweeping into our federal government, it is time to say no to those who think we are a soft touch and unable to stand up to their demands. This determination to do what is right is the reason why a very few of the UK men’s basketball games will not be available on our cable system again this year.
Remember, most games will be available to our customers via cable or the ESPN 3 site. We urge you to become familiar with the link at the middle of the www.glasgow-ky.com home page called “What’s On EPB Cable?” where you can find special information about local programming and the highly desirable UK and U of L sports programming. Click on that link to see where you can find the games you want to see (and lots of very good local events programming on Cable6 as well as our suggestions for other programming you do not want to miss). As always, please call us with any questions you have about these issues.
New E-bill Coming Your Way
A lot of us now routinely get e-bills from our utilities and credit card companies instead of the old conventional paper bill. Glasgow EPB started offering e-billing several years ago, before the process really had all of the kinks worked out of it. A large number of our customers in Glasgow opt for the e-bill and many follow up on the e-bill by also making their payments online. If you are one of those, or if you want to check into becoming an e-bill customer, things are about to get a lot easier and better for you!
As part of the process of preparing for new electric rate designs starting next year, we are changing all of our billing over to a new system. While this process is dreadful for the folks on the EPB team, it is going to open the door to a much nicer e-billing system. Very soon all existing e-bill customers will be getting an email from us with a link to a new sign up site. Do not be afraid that this is some sort of fraud email! It will be the real deal! Once everyone signs up as they are prompted to do, then they will start getting the new e-bill and they will have access to some exciting new features. First of all, everyone will have access to their historic bills. Folks who pay online will have the new option of storing their credit card information so that they will not have to enter it each month.
These new features will not be just for existing e-bill customers. We are hoping that these features will cause everyone to reconsider going paperless and getting their bills via email. We will be posting a link to the service so that everyone can sign up at their leisure. I can assure you, once you get started using this method and reducing the amount of paper piling up on your desk, you will fall in love with e-billing.
Call us at 651-8341 if you need help signing up for the new e-billing from Glasgow EPB!
Want to Save $50 per Month?
Saving money was not the goal when I started down the path toward having no wired telephone service, but that is the final result! Like everyone else that was using the EPB/Cinergy/Norlight telephone service, I was told that Norlight planned to abandon the Glasgow market by the end of the year and that I should make arrangements for an alternate service provider. After procrastinating for a couple of months, here is what I did.
Our situation is probably very similar to thousands of other families in Glasgow. I have a cell phone, my wife has a cell phone, and we had the old reliable wired phone service to our house. For years we have seen the habit of younger folks to save money and complication by simply using one cell phone and one phone number for all voice communication. As we contemplated the move from Norlight’s service to some other provider, we decided to jump into the same sort of telephone environment which has been working fine for our children. Not only has it worked just fine, we are saving the $50 or so per month that we were sending to Norlight!The first step was to go to our cell phone provider (we happen to use AT&T but this will work with any of them) and tell them that we needed a new cell phone with Bluetooth and GPS features, and we told them we wanted to port our home phone number to the cell phone. This took a bit of discussion as they needed our Norlight account number and we had to agree to pay a $30 one-time charge to port our home phone number to the cell phone. We were also told that the actual port might happen anytime from three days to thirty days out, but we were determined to accept this vague transaction. My wife left the AT&T store with a new Samsung phone armed with Bluetooth and GPS.
Next we bought this amazing little device http://www.myxlink.com/xlink_bt.aspx called a Bluetooth gateway. We got ours online and simply plugged it in and followed the directions to pair it up with the new cell phone. The thing is simply amazing. When the cell phone is within about twenty feet of the device, they “pair” using the wireless Bluetooth technology. Once they are paired and the device is plugged into any telephone outlet in your house, all of your home phones ring when someone calls the cell phone. Similarly, you can use any of the regular phones in your house, just like you always have, to answer and make calls. The only difference is that the calls are coming and going through the cell phone instead of through a wired telephone provider but you really cannot tell the difference. This is all accomplished simply by bringing the phone into the range of the Bluetooth gateway. After the initial pairing, it happens automatically as you come and go from then on!
About four days after the initial visit to the AT&T store, calls to our old home number started ringing through to the new cell phone. Once that happened, we disconnected our home from the Norlight service and finished plugging in the new Bluetooth gateway. Since then, our home phone service acts just like it always did when we are at home and the cell phone is paired with the gateway. When we are gone, we take our home phone number with us via the cell phone. And there is more.
One of the fears we had in making this transition was the lack of location identification if we had an emergency and had to call 911. However, since we activated the GPS feature on the new cell phone, I am happy to report that test calls to 911 have, so far, reliably resulted in them seeing my address on their screens! I find this simply amazing.
So, at the end of the day, we are saving the $50 per month that we were spending on our Norlight telephone line. We canceled the old cell phone so now we are just out for the monthly cost of two cell phones. This should be very exciting for all of you who are trying to decide what to do about the end of Norlight telephone service in Glasgow as well as everyone else who has a wired telephone line and the desire to save some money. This solution seems to work amazingly well and we will miss fewer calls since we will be taking our home phone number with us when we are away. If you would like help in accomplishing this same result at your home, give us a call or an email.
Glasgow - An Internet Savvy City
Sixteen years later, most would be shocked to learn just how much data comes and goes between Glasgow EPB internet customers and the rest of the world. New switching equipment at our Jama M Young Technology Center gives us the details. Each day our customers send and receive over two terra bytes of information via their EPB internet connections. That is the equivalent of 500,000 digitized songs per day, or about 500 million average magazine pages! In fact, at the present rate of data transmission to and from Glasgow EPB customers, we are consuming information equal to all of the printed books in the United States Library of Congress every week.
You might also be amazed to learn just how popular Glasgow’s original website, www.glasgow-ky.com is. On average, that page is called up four times per second, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Glasgow may be a very small rural city inhabited by only about 15,000 folks, but those folks all have a tremendous appetite for information!
What We Did This Summer
About this time every year we are faced with customers that want certain sports programming that is not available in our market, or which is so highly priced that it is out of the community's budget range. This year we have found an affordable solution in ESPN 3. ESPN 3 is a way to deliver just about all sporting events that ESPN covers, from anywhere in the country, to your computer screen. Say you just moved to Glasgow from Texas and want to see the Aggies play -- you can watch the game on your computer via our new deal with ESPN 3! If you want help figuring out how to hook your computer up to your television so it feels the same as watching the event on regular ESPN, just give us a call and we can help you with that as well. Look for the ESPN 3 logo and click on it via the Glasgow home page. After you do, finding the game you want should be pretty self-explanatory.
This service is just another expansion of the high speed internet service operated by your locally owned Glasgow EPB. There have been a lot of rumors and bad information circulating around Glasgow of late regarding our cable and internet services as we distance ourselves from the telephone business. Anyone who tells you that this company, or that company, has bought out the EPB's cable or internet business is simply telling you something that is totally untrue. We are in the midst of massive upgrades to both our cable and internet services, and if you leave our services for a competitor just because of our change in philosophy about the telephone business, you are leaving the very best services available in the 42141 zip code! We invented high speed internet access in Glasgow, and our services will always be the ones where new technology is first delivered to the people of Glasgow. We have no other communities to serve but this one.