What does an installation involve?
You will need to be on site for the installation, as we will need to bring the cable from the SM on the outside to your computer(s) inside. Our installers will not cause any modifications to your home or business without your explicit consent. If your building is constructed in such a convenient manner, we may be able to drop our cable into an attic or raised roof/ceiling through a sealed vent or a roof-cap. All of our attachments/penetrations of your building will be water-proofed just as we would water proof our equipment on our tower sites. We will attempt to electrically ground the SM if necessary. We highly recommend a quality Ethernet surge protector (with power outlets) for inside your building and stock a recommended model available for your purchase (APC PF11VNT3).

If you have successful satellite TV installation experience, we want to talk to you about working with us for internet installations.

Isn't this just like Satellite?
No. Our fixed wireless service is faster and much more responsive than satellite, primarily because there is a large latency problem with satellite technology. With satellite internet, the signal has to travel more than 40,000 miles resulting in long delays causing internet games to be nearly unplayable, among other aggravations. With our wireless system the signal only travels about 0-12 miles which means that remote sites respond instantly.

What is the difference between this and DSL or cable?
Both DSL and cable require a land-line telephone or a cable television subscription, which means the internet service comes to your location via those cables (and their associated expense). Both of these legacy technologies are quite limited in their upload speeds, somewhere around 1/6th to 1/12th of the advertised download speeds. Also, both types of service aren’t available in many areas and when it is, if you are “too far” from the local municipal office, the speed and service available to you decreases with distance. With our wireless network, you’ll receive the same speed and service regardless of the distance and your upload speeds will be two to eight times greater than either DSL or cable.

How long will it take to get service?
Due to high demand, it can take around 1-2 weeks from signing up to be installed. Once we determine you are in our coverage area, a technician will contact you to make an appointment. Installations performed during the week are usually done within 2 hours.

What will interfere with the signal?
Anything in the path between you and our wireless/tower site can block the signal. Trees and buildings are common issues. If you have a clear, optical line of sight, the service will almost certainly work. It is possible that you will have radio frequency interference in/near your location and you might have to deactivate any such devices to allow desired operation of your internet service.

Where are your tower sites?
Click here to see our coverage map. It shows our tower sites.

How can I use my current (or old) E-mail account?
The answer varies with the type of email account. If you are using web based email like Hotmail.com or Yahoo! Mail, then there is no change. You simply use your web browser and access your account as usual. If you have an e-mail account with a dial-up or other type of ISP, it is not as simple. First, be assured that you can always receive email for a different ISP through Horizon Broadband -- receiving will not be a problem. But you will need an account on our email server before you can send any email through our system. We set up e-mail accounts during normal business hours (8am- 5pm, M-F). Weekend e-mail account administration is not available.

Once this is accomplished, to send email through us to the other ISP, you may have to turn on some security options in your email client or contact the other ISP for assistance. Most of the time, this is nothing more than setting your email client software (Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc) to enable “This server requires authentication” somewhere in the clients’ configuration option settings. We highly recommend everyone acquiring an “online”, free email address from a place like Yahoo! Mail because that address will not change if you switch internet providers and those places do provide quite a few features for little to no monthly expense.

Okay, so what’s the difference between the Residential plans and the Business plans?
Other than the obvious “more features are ‘freely’ available to you”, the download and upload bandwidth is managed a little differently. The key difference is all business connections are given priority on our network. This is particularly important for an all-internet-based business or for Voice Over IP (VoiP) and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). To illustrate what this means, consider the possibility that several customers will share the same wireless access point, and, all customers are using the internet connection at the same time. Each customer will be “served” by the access point on a best-effort basis. The access point is robust enough to give about a hundred customers quick service at the same time, as long as not more than a few customers are forcing a heavy load on it at the same time. Furthermore, not any customer will have higher priority on the access points’ capacity unless they have one of our Business service plans. So, when customers are busily downloading the latest movie trailer and a Business customer wants to place a VOIP call, he will be able to do so without packet loss or “choppiness” because he will get priority access to the access point.

What’s a Public IP address vs. a Private one?
Public IP addresses are publically accessible (ie, “routable”) IP address numbers. These are the groups of internet address numbers which are assigned to entities who want or need their computers/networks to be publically available from anywhere on the internet. Most ISPs provide public addresses by default, but assign them dynamically to try to maximize the “real time” usage of such addresses. This is important because there are only so many public IP addresses available (until IP version 6 is fully implemented in the internet world – right now and forever into the past, we’ve been at IP v4) and there is an acute shortage of said IP numbers. Several technologies have been developed as a work around for this shortage (such as virtual web hosting – this is more than one web page “name” per single IP address), but there is nonetheless a shortage. We choose to assign public IP addresses to customers who truly need them in an attempt to conserve the internet environment and when we do so, they are assigned “statically” or “manually”. A static IP address is one that doesn’t change: the same IP address points to the same website all the time. You can see that if you want a permanent internet presence, you definitely will need a “statically assigned, public IP address”. There are other circumstances which might require a public IP address.

Private IP addresses can be re-used from business to business, house to house. They are not routable over the internet at large and are therefore freely available for your choosing and using as you want. Our default service plans provide private IP addresses because that’s what most customers only/really need anyway. If you bump into an internet service that isn’t working correctly or consistently for you, then you probably need to upgrade to a Public IP type service. The wireless routers available at retail stores all work with either a public or private IP address and provide around 250 private IP numbers for private use in your home or business.

Also, a private IP address inherently provides a minimal firewall from the constant noise and havoc of internet worms and other malicious internet-related software. Public IP numbers put your computers/networks right on the internet, making your computers as accessible to the internet as places like Yahoo! or CNN.com

How does Horizon Broadband, Inc. manage its bandwidth?
ISP’s generally cannot afford to give any one (much less several) customer a “wide-open” data-stream to the internet for hours on end. If that’s what we did, we would not be in business for very long. Bandwidth seems to be like electricity in that, we all pretty much take it for granted, and only the bill-payers know that it is not “free”. The best any ISP can do is purchase the most upstream bandwidth feasible and then share it, in an intelligent, managed fashion, with all the customers in a roughly equitable manner. At a minimum, we want all our customers to receive an excellent value and we are committed to this goal. But we cannot afford to give everyone a 6+ megabit per second transfer speed, everyday, all day long. We manage our bandwidth to balance profitability with our customers’ needs. And we believe that we do a good job of that. Generally, here’s how it works:

For a given single download “session”, for several seconds, all customers should see very fast download speeds, something like 4+ mega bits per second (and faster rates are coming soon). But after an initial “burst” of sufficient data size, the connection for that particular download is throttled to a minimum speed until that download is completed. The customer can then see the super speeds again, but only after waiting a minute or so after the first download is completed. This is called “token bucket queueing” and works rather well. This is why we advertise our speeds as “500 up to 6000”. What you are buying is a burst of 5-6000 kilo bits per second with a minimum promised speed of 500 Kbps.

What this basically means is, nearly everyone nearly all the time should see very fast download rates, eventually upwards of 7-10 Mbps . But for the few of you who need to download “large” files rather often, you should either purchase a business plan or one of the larger residential plans. We believe that 95% of customers will be very happy with any of our residential plans 99% of the time. If you find yourself in the 5% or the 1% groups, then you need greater internet bandwidth for longer dedicated time periods. Your only options are to either upgrade your account with us or purchase your own dedicated internet connection from businesses like AT&T or MCI or Qwest, for several hundred dollars a month. Frankly, you’ll spend less money and get better service by upgrading with us.

If we deem it necesary, we may impose a monthly data size cap of around 10 Gigabyes per customer (10 GB = 10,000 megabytes = 10,000,000 kilobytes. A web page is typically around 100 kB in size. 10 GB is a huge amount of data! Online games require very little bandwidth, not counting the five hundred-megabyte game patches....) After that either you will be billed for the extra usage or your connection will be throttled even further or turned off until the next month begins.

Okay, so what’s a “large” file?
“Large” is a handful of mega bytes, sufficiently large enough to satisfy all but the few bandwidth hungry customers.

When I do a speed test on XYZ.com website, it says …
Yes, I know. I see the same results from the office. But I assure you that those speed tests are like parents: they are doing their best, they are far from perfect, and looking in hindsite, we can all criticize somewhere. That being said, you shouldn’t see terrible speeds from any of them, so if you do, please run the speed test link from our website to see if it is your link with us or the internet at large. If your link to our office is good, then the problem lies beyond our control. Yes, it is possible that “the internet” (or, rather, a critical-link router out in bit-space) can become congested and “slow down”. Horizon Broadband has no control over routers beyond our own.

Uh, what’s a router?
It’s a dedicated-to-routing-and-passing-network-traffic computer system. The wireless routers you can purchase at a local retailer are a very small scale version of a real router.

I can place telephone calls via the internet?
Yes you can. But you’ll have to subscribe to a service which provides a phone number for you (Vonage or Skype are examples – do an internet search for more options). But be aware that 911 Emergency services might not work properly with such a telephone service.

What email services do you offer?
We have our own email servers (with spam and virus scanning) and you can access your email a number of ways. The most simple way is via the webmail application, which is much like a Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail account in that you use your web browser. To do this, point your browser to: http://mail.horizonbroadband.net and log in with your complete email address and your password. Our mail server is also configured to provide POP3 and SMTP email access and you’ll have to configure your own email software on your PCs to take advantage of that. Soon we also will provide IMAP type email. If you are savvy about your email, then you’ll know enough of what all these mean. If you are just looking for the simplest and most available feature, then use our webmail application. To use POP3, the servers are mail.horizonbroadband.net for both POP3 and SMTP and your login/account name is not just your username, it is your entire email address (this is very important!) If you don’t know how to configure your email software for POP3 and SMTP, our suggestion is to contact a computer-helper friend or do an internet search for “How to set up Outlook Express” or whatever the name of your email software is. We recommend Mozilla Thunderbird over Outlook Express due to stability, security and features.

We deal with spam and email viruses on a number of “levels”. Perfectly eliminating spam is impossible, but together we will be able to keep our horizonbroadband.net domain name relatively clean of most spam.

Are you guys “for real”?
Of course! We have dedicated a team of computer/networking, radio frequency, marketing, installation and customer service experts to the opportunity Horizon Broadband faces. We expect to meet 100% of our annual goals because we know that we are not only offering a high-speed internet service where (generally) there isn’t any, we are offering a superior internet service compared to any you’ll find within our coverage area. Our network was researched and engineered for minimal congestion and ease of expansion. All of our tower sites have backup power systems in the event commercial power fails. All of our servers have at least double-redundant power supplies connected to backup power systems and they all have redundant disk drive subsystems. We spent extra resources designing our tower sites to be the least susceptible to radio frequency interference from nearly any source. And for when we experience congestion at our upstream internet connection, we have budgeted funds necessary to upgrade that connection so that we can remain the provider of choice, new-technology, 21st century internet service provider for our area. Lastly, we fully intend to be here for the “long term”.

Is there any “downside”?
Well, yes, there are some things which Horizon Broadband does not have any control over. Other than obvious things like natural disasters, there is only one vulnerability to a wireless network: unwanted radio frequency energy, which is largely invisible, may suddenly appear near our equipment, resulting in undesired operation of the radio equipment. What this looks like to the customer is dropped or no connection or a slow “connection” to the internet.

If you’ve ever experienced a dropped call with a cell phone conversation, this is similar. Will this happen very often? No, it will not. In fact, it should be quite rare. But since the primary transmission media of our service is literally through the open air and obviously no one has much control over what goes on in our atmosphere, this sort of thing can happen and probably will happen a little, from time to time. If it occurs often enough, then it’s probably a stationary source of undesired radio energy and we’ll likely be able to find it and eliminate it. If the problem appears randomly, then that’s a much more difficult problem to isolate and we’ll do our best.

Certain “wireless” or “cordless” consumer devices can interfere with nearby radio equipment. Things like cordless phones, wireless home security systems, microwave ovens and other devices which emit radio frequency energy can possibly interfere with the desired operation of part of or all of our network. Rest assured that we are aware of such things and have taken every possible measure to shield and protect our network from such disturbances.

These statements are true of all consumer-affordable wireless networks. In spite of these facts, our wireless technology is faster and generally better than any affordable cable-based technology.

So what does Horizon Broadband NOT do?
We will not take care of your computers/networks for you. We do not work on computers. We do not remove viruses from computers. We do not ensure that your computers will work on our network. We do not support (in some cases, “tolerate”) certain Peer-to-Peer internet services. We own our network, you are leasing rights to use it from us, and we reserve the right to do with it as we please within contractual obligations we agree to in writing. If you are a business or potential business customer, we will work with your IT personnel to bring about robust, secure and inexpensive internet/network solutions. We make the final decision about how to best meet our customers’ needs as we are the only entity who fully understands our network.

Wireless Internet Service Agreement

By establishing an account or using the Services of Horizon Broadband, Inc. you agree to be bound by this Agreement and to use the Services in compliance with this Agreement, our Acceptable Use Policy and other policies.

The following terms and conditions shall apply to all customers subscribing to Horizon Broadband Internet Service.  This Agreement is part of and shall be incorporated into the Acceptable Use Policy.  In utilizing Horizon Broadband Internet Service, Customer agrees to adhere to the terms and conditions of the Acceptable Use Policy and this Agreement as Horizon Broadband may modify it from time to time.  In the event of an inconsistency or conflict between the Acceptable Use Policy and this Agreement, the provisions of this Agreement shall govern.

Payment Policies and Terms:  Subscriber shall be bank drafted or credit card charged monthly for service one month in advance.  Delinquent accounts shall be placed on “accounting hold” and services to the Subscriber shall be suspended until the account is paid in full.  For any Subscribers’ account that has been placed on suspended service there shall be due a fifty dollar ($50.00) reconnection charge to reactivate Subscribers’ services after the arrearage has been paid.  A twenty five dollar ($25.00) fee will be added to the subscriber account in the event of any bank returned debit. 

Termination:  Subscriber may terminate this Agreement by submitting a request for termination (by email, fax, US Mail, or telephone) to the addresses or phone numbers listed in this agreement.  Requests received prior to close of business shall have a termination date of the next business day.  Subscriber shall be liable for the remaining portion of the contract, plus a fifty dollar ($50.00) termination fee.

Without prior notice, Horizon Broadband may terminate this Agreement, your password, your account, or your use of the Services for any reason, including, without limitation, if Horizon Broadband, in its sole discretion, believes you have violated this Agreement, our Acceptable Use Policy, or any of the applicable user policies, or if you fail to pay any charges when due.  Horizon Broadband may provide termination notice to you by email addressed to your email account or by US Mail or courier service to the address you provided for the Services.  Termination by Horizon Broadband for violation of Horizon’s Acceptable Use Policy shall be subject to the termination fee as described above.

Additional Fees:  In the event that special construction, or additional equipment including but not limited to longer cable, additional grounding, higher tower or mast hardware, or specialized antennas are necessary, an additional fee will be required for said equipment and any additional labor not included in the standard installation fee.  Additional labor is billed at $30.00 per half hour.

Equipment and Scope of Work:  All equipment, modems, subscriber modules, antennas, and standard mounting equipment will at all times remain the property of Horizon Broadband.  Subscriber may not sell, transfer, lease, encumber or assign all or part of the equipment to any third party.  Subscriber shall pay for the full retail cost of, or the repair or replacement of any lost, stolen, unreturned, damaged, sold, transferred, leased, encumbered or assigned equipment or part thereof, together with any costs incurred by Horizon Broadband in obtaining or attempting to obtain possession of any such equipment.  On expiration or termination of this Agreement, Subscriber authorizes Horizon Broadband to retrieve from Subscriber’s premises equipment that is owned by Horizon Broadband.

Standard Maintenance:  Horizon Broadband’s connection point ends at the Subscriber Module.  Any trouble beyond our network or equipment is the full responsibility of the Subscriber and their subsequent Network Administrator or vendor.  Standard maintenance is limited solely to Horizon Broadband’s network and backbone connectivity.

If your connection ceases to function properly but Horizon Broadband’s network is still functioning properly, a technician will be sent to troubleshoot during normal business hours. (9am-4:30pm Monday-Friday)  If the problem is due to subscriber negligence or any of those items listed in the “not covered by Standard Maintance” section standard hourly rates apply.

Not covered by Standard Maintenance:  Maintenance, repair or replacement of parts damaged or lost through catastrophe, accident, lightning, neglect, misuse, transportation, theft, fault or negligence of Subscriber or causes external to the wireless system, such as, but not limited to failure of or faulty electrical power, operator error, or malfunction of Subscribers computer and/or peripheral equipment not installed by Horizon Broadband, or from any cause related to or other than the intended and ordinary use.  Antenna re-aiming or relocation due to obstructions such as trees, vegetation or buildings, storm related damage, any re-aiming or relocation of antennas, or reconstruction of tower/mast assemblies will be billed to the Subscriber at standard hourly rates.

Indemnification/Release:  Subscriber, its agent, successor and/or assigns expressly agrees to indemnify and release Horizon Broadband, its affiliates, subcontractors, employees, agents, assigns or successors from any liability for any claims, losses, actions, damages, suits, or proceedings arising out of or otherwise related to Subscriber’s installation of, use of, or termination of Horizon Broadband’s services hereunder including but not limited to, Subscriber’s access to content uploaded or downloaded using Horizon Broadband’s service from any source or to any recipient.  Subscriber further releases Horizon Broadband from any responsibility or liability related to the accuracy, quality for confidentiality of any information available by or through Horizon Broadband’s systems and/or the wireless network.  Subscriber’s release of Horizon Broadband includes any actions or inaction by Horizon Broadband which amount to negligence.  Subscriber further agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Horizon Broadband Inc. from and against any and all claims, actions, causes of action, losses or damages including attorney’s fees witch in any way arise from Subscriber’s installation of, use of, termination of, Horizon Broadband’s services herein.

Disclaimer:  Horizon Broadband assumes no responsibility for the content contained on the Internet or otherwise available through the wireless network or from any source accessible via Horizon Broadband’s services.  Horizon Broadband discloses and Subscriber acknowledges that there may be content on the Internet or otherwise available through the services provided by Horizon Broadband which may be offensive to some individuals, which may not be in compliance with local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations.  This includes but is not limited to pornographic or otherwise inappropriate or sexually explicit or offensive content.  Subscriber acknowledges to Horizon Broadband that its use of Horizon Broadband’s service to access information, content or other services is at its own risk.

Governing Law and Venue:  The laws of the State of Arkansas shall govern the terms of this Agreement.  The parties hereto stipulate and agree that the exclusive venue for the resolution of all disputes concerning this Agreement shall be Saline County, Arkansas.

Customer Agreement:  The customer agrees that they have read and understood the checklist, FAQ and “Won’t Do” sections of the Horizon Broadband website.  The customer assumes all liability of providing a computer or device capable of using IP over Ethernet.

Entire Agreement:  This Agreement constitutes the entire Agreement between the parties and not other representations or statement will binging upon the parties.  If any part of the Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable for any reason, the remaining terms and conditions of this agreement shall remain in full force and effect

Acceptable Use Policy

Horizon Broadband agrees to provide high speed wireless internet to the subscriber subject to the following terms and conditions:

Residential Plan service is for single family residence or home-office use only.  Internet sharing is allowed only within the boundaries of the residence.  Allowing others to use this connection via wired, wireless (WiFi or other technology) or by other means will result in immediate disconnection.  Reselling this service will result in immediate disconnection.  Business Plan Subscribers may set up a WiFi hotspot with permission from Horizon Broadband, but this is only allowed on a case by case basis.

Using a personal account for high volume or commercial use (e.g. revenue generation, advertising, etc.) is prohibited.  Email accounts exceeding the Member’s allotted email space may, at Horizon’s discretion, be transferred to a compressed temporary file or storage.  Horizon may delete the temporary file from the server 60 days after notifying you.

Abuse of Services

Any use of the system that disrupts the normal use of the system for other Subscribers is considered to be abuse of services.  The propagation of computer worms or viruses or the use of the network to make unauthorized entry to computational, information, or communication devices or resources of others is a violation of this agreement.  The use of Horizon’s services by Subscribers to modify, alter, reverse engineer, decompile disk, or disassemble any proprietary work in whatever form is a violation of this agreement.  The failure of any Subscriber running IPX to use an IP tunneling protocol is a violation of this Agreement.  The broadcast of Routing Internet Protocol (RIP) or any other inter router protocol by Subscriber is a violation of this Agreement.  Any Subscriber deemed by Horizon Broadband to be in violation of this section is subject to immediate termination by Horizon Broadband.  Termination under this section shall have no liability other than to refund any unearned prepaid service fees including direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages.

Monitoring the Services

Horizon Broadband has no obligation to monitor the Services, but may do so and disclose information regarding use of the Services for any reason if Horizon Broadband, in its sole discretion, believes that it is reasonable to do so, including to: satisfy laws, regulations, or governmental or legal requests; operate the Services properly; or protect itself and its interests.

Horizon Broadband may immediately remove your material or information from Horizon’s servers, in whole or in part, which Horizon, in its sole and absolute discretion, determines to infringe another’s property rights or to violate our Acceptable Use Policy.

Additional Clarifications, Terms and Conditions

Usernames, passwords and email addresses are Horizon Broadband’s property and Horizon Broadband may alter or replace them at any time.

Horizon Broadband has no control over certain types of interference and signal blockage.  We do not guarantee any level or quality of service.  If the service becomes unusable and cannot be restored within 2 working days, your account will be credited for the outage.  If service is interrupted more than an aggregate of 96 hours in any given month, term contracts may be cancelled without penalty.

Horizon Broadband cannot be held liable for any type of loss, whether actual or percieved, due to a lack of service.

Subscribers understand that services will be interrupted from time to time for various reasons including maintenance, upgrades and power outages.  Horizon Broadband will attempt to inform its customers of scheduled outages at least a few days in advance via the email addresses on file provided by the customer to Horizon Broadband.