Slopeside Internet LLC (SSI) provides broadband internet access services to residential & commercial subscribers in eastern Grand County, Colorado. Our Internet services are provided over SSI’s fixed wireless broadband network using licensed, lightly licensed, and unlicensed wireless spectrum and via the all important backhaul connections down to Denver where our true connection to the global Internet is made.
Please note that SSI is committed to providing our Internet products & services on as open a service platform as we can that enables innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free speech to all. We support and open and an transparent Internet eco-system when ever we can.
That said, there are many requirements placed on the Internet backhaul connections we use down to Denver that are by definition–constrained resources. This means that they must be managed judiciously in order to support our customers and the viability of our business as a going concern. This process is often referred to as network traffic management and is a foundational element of any ISP’s broadband Internet Access services and the network that they are delivered on.
SSI does not block any lawful content, applications, services, or your use of non-harmful devices, or discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic except as reasonably necessary to manage our network effectively for the benefit of our subscribers as described below. Please note that this document is intended to be informational and does not replace or alter the legal terms and conditions of our service.
The purpose of this document–besides being a regulatory requirement of the Federal Government of the United States of America– is to offer a reasonable level of transparency & information about our network management practices and the network speeds and commercial terms of our broadband Internet access services so potential (and current!) SSI customers like you to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of our services.
This document is provided, in accordance with the open Internet policies and rules of the Federal Communications Commission (ie the FCC) who is the Independent Expert Federal Agency of the US Government which has tasked to Regulate most of the US Internet & telecommunications industry in the US and other services that are digital in nature.
Network Management Practices
The SSI network does not block access to or discriminate against any lawful web site, application or service. All lawful Internet use is handled identically. SSI does not slow, throttle or shape one type of use over another.
- No Blocking: SSI does not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
- No Throttling: SSI does not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. *
- No Paid Prioritization: SSI does not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind–ie: no “fast lanes” for those who are willing to pay for them.
Congestion Management
SSI is committed to providing the best online experience possible for all of its subscribers. In order to ensure the best experience, in certain circumstances, managing the network is required. SSI network management techniques are tailored to ensure that under congested network conditions, all subscribers receive their fair share of the service.
This type of Network management is only activated when congestion is detected on our network. When a specific device is determined “congested”, the subscribers serviced from/by the network device(s) in question are analyzed and then managed based on the plan and usage thresholds of the users in question until the congestion has been alleviated. Subscribers will still be able to do what they want online and in many cases activities may be unaffected, but subscribers may see reduced speed in downloads and/or uploads. No specific type of usage activity is targeted by these techniques. It is important to note this type of network management is temporary in nature and based on SSI reacting to dynamic network conditions.
Note that SSI generally use “round-robin” or “fair queuing” in our routing fabric as a network management tool when congestion is present in the network. This means data traffic get equally “split up” based on available bandwidth across all active subscribers regardless of usage or service plan.
The Network Management practices described in this section are part of a defacto SSI network architecture. The overall reason for Network Management it to assure all products and services that SSI provides are the best they can be to support our base of customers, and also our compliance to the laws established by the FCC.
Equipment
Subscribers may connect to the service with any lawful, non-harmful equipment of their choice–though we urge our customers to use our zero cost WiFi home router so that we can maintain your in-home router for you. We do this to assure he most trouble free WiFi experience for your home or business as sometimes exploits such as Malware or Computer Viruses can be “mass produced” on WiFi routers not properly maintained. SSI believes by providing free WiFi router’s to its customers assure a good level of WiFi support & ease of configuration for our customers that might not otherwise be possible.
This still assures that any equipment (..such as a computer, or router, or any other type of “Internet-Enabled” consumer electronic device) that get its connection to the Internet via SSI’s managed Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) or the SSI managed router on site, will still work fine. Note our CPE (usually installed outdoors on the customer premises) receives its Internet connection in almost all cases wirelessly from a one of our tower site locations appropriate to the subscriber’s location.
Network Security
SSI uses a number of tools and techniques to protect its network and subscribers from malicious and unwanted Internet traffic that we feel can prevent the distribution of viruses or other harmful malware code which could cause harm to our subscriber’s computers or other Internet-connected devices.
Its important to mention that– because the nature of external threats to the network connected to the Internet are constantly evolving– SSI network security practices are also dynamic and regularly changing. In general, these security practices should not have any effect on our subscribers’ use of their network connections. Also please note that these practices are of huge importance to our Network Security, and what we protect on SSI’s network–our customers and our ability to deliver service.
The 24×7 awareness of, and monitoring of, a range of foundational security measures is a “best practice” that we always work to keep up with. The list of these measures is too long to list here, but, under the right conditions we are more than willing to discuss how we handle Network Security–with the caveat that any network security measures we use (if disclosed to the wrong people) could create a negative impact on our network and our customers. And, while we are willing to be transparent about the security measures employed–we will require justification of any disclosure from the requesting party in writing.
Network Speeds
SSI offers a range of Internet speeds to residential and commercial subscribers. The network is designed to support these speeds to help ensure that every subscriber receives the speeds to which they have subscribed. SSI however cannot guarantee speeds at all times, as there are many factors and conditions beyond SSI’s control that can affect Internet performance. Some of these external factors and conditions are:
- Performance of a subscriber’s computer and their personal router
- The type of connection to/from the Customer’s router (i.e. WIFI or ethernet cable, fiber, etc)
- Congestion of web sites and services for away on a distant Internet server
- Or a given Web site’s service who may be limiting the speeds to their site if they are seeing heavy traffic on their site from the Internet
- Internet performance upstream of SSI’s network that can suffer from periodic congestion based on peak-usage times of the week or times of day–or other unknown factors.
This all simply means that SSI’s services (as we are a “last-mile” provider) are offered on a “best effort basis” and that SSI’s package speeds are offered measuring speeds described as “up to” that really reflect performance under ideal conditions–or at least speeds across our piece of the Internet.
In the spirit of transparency, and because the reality is that speeds & Internet condition upstream from SSI’s network can see issues any time of the day or night, we are not in a position to (in any absolute way) guarantee what conditions occur once our traffic egresses from SSI’s network.
Such conditions can often effect even the large business subscriber using much more expensive “Dedicated Internet Access” services (also know as “middle-mile connections”) that usually have significant “Service Level Agreements” (or SLA) from larger backbone providers.
In 2019 SSI plans to provide an “on-net” speed test server for our subscribers to use–though that speed test tool will only measure data moving across our piece of the Internet. While the test results on our speed test service website will provide information regarding our “on-net” speeds, they are still not be definitive any speed test we have will still be highly dependent on equipment & configuration found in the home network as well as conditions on the wider Internet.
Pricing & Service offerings and other Value
SSI has a number of service offerings that reflect our history and experience using fixed wireless technology and our ability to deliver broadband Internet Service with it.
But service Pricing and Speed are key metrics that must be shared in a clear concise way.
So, for our service speeds, they can vary from 3 Mbps to 40 Mbps speeds with our current generation of equipment. These speeds will increase with the entry of Fixed Wireless LTE into the marketplace.
For these speeds, our customers can expect to pay any where from $30 to $85 dollars–depending of the level of service our customer decides to purchase from us and if they are residential or business customers.
Note that we also offer other “non-monetary value” to our customers either by sharing information with them about Internet-connected consumer products we recommend, or by offering flexible billing practices that support the various types of customers that we have here in the Winter Park-Fraser Valley. Whether the customer lives in Denver and has their 2nd home in eastern Grand County, or if they’re local full time residences who live here and work here as well as drive our local economy, we try to offer flexibility and service to convey how much we appreciate their business. There is no way to tell larger ISP’s how important this type of value is to our individual customers, and no way to see them make similar offers.
Also note that our services-because they are terrestrial in nature (ie ground-based and usually fiber backhauled) usually have very low latency. The quality of latency is a measure of how quickly a data packet of information moves from one point on the Internet to another. To put numbers on this, there are speed tests that include latency (& jitter too) and our customers usually see in the low to middle 10’s of milliseconds. The smaller the number, the faster the speed. And, if you count latency as important (as some Internet application do.. such as VoIP or VPN connection to work down in Denver, and others) then you will know why Satellite broadband can be latencies into the middle and higher hundreds. This too, is an important non-monetary value that our technology offers to our customers.
Our Terms of Service
SSI has multiple levels of residential & commercial Internet service offerings, and the price of each service level is set forth in our service agreement, and soon on our new website too.
Note that we support the intake of new customers by using the following process:
- Once a potential client contacts us with any type of service request, we require that we receive an email from them disclosing the service address & their contact information and a “expression of interest” or a “service installation request” to get our Internet services at their location.
- Once we confirm the ownership of the location of the specified address, (to confirm if the potential customer owners or rents the property) we’ll use software tools–and most times–a site visit that will allow us to confirm the serviceability we can offer at the requested address.
- We’ll then contact the potential client again to inform them of the level of services we feel we can deliver, and will email them a copy of our Residential or Business Service Agreement (SA) as needed. Said SA will contain our current pricing for monthly recurring service fees–as well as any one-time non-recurring charges associated with doing an installation for that location.
- If the potential client decides to move forward, we’ll set a tentative installation date & time and ask if they have any questions about the SA or its content before they sign the SA. If not, we’ll ask them to fill in their info and sign the SA and firm up their installation date & time.
Note that the above process assures that potential customers ALWAYS get the needed information required to make an informed buying decision about our service.
We feel its important to be transparent in a competitive market as consumer confusion and missteps are common in consumer & business broadband purchasing–mostly because needed information & knowledge is often scare or missing –at least from the consumer/decision makers point of view.
Usage Metering
All SSI subscriptions are truly unlimited or uncapped. SSI does NOT limit subscribers to a specific amount of Internet usage or throttle subscribers based on Internet usage. We believe this is a future looking practice and hope that all adopt this approach.
That said, there are situations possible in some places on our network that the constrained resource of the Internet link we provide, can be congested beyond what has been designed for. This is usually caused by computer viruses or other types of Internet exploits that are designed to create a “storm” of usage and saturate a user’s Internet connection.
SSI’s will–when required–monitor customer usage levels to be able to respond should such congestion issues occur. This response is strictly to support the quality of the products we offer to our customers. Usage metering and monitoring is a “best practices” and proactive way to be able to address congestion issues that effect our customers.
Transparency
SSI’s network management practices, and the performance of our services and terms of our services are made available to consumers in hopes of both setting expectations about our services and to be transparent and minimize consumer confusion so that informed choices can be made by the potential consumers of Internet services from SSI
For the products that we offer, there are some basic performance characteristics and methods for managing same, and acceptable use policies that we have described on our website.
We feel that this information is he foundation of consumers being able to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of our service offerings.
SSI Privacy Policies
SSI values and supports –with vigor– the requirement & importance of protecting the privacy of our subscribers and we follow procedures and uses tools to ensure that information we collect on our network traffic is better than reasonably protected. Additionally, details concerning the types of information SSI collects, how the information is used, and your privacy rights, can be found on our website in our privacy statement
Its also important to know that SSI feels that–though we support transparency– we also are highly aware of why keeping any private customer information and usage data must be do so securely.
We will never, ever, sell our data and will also NOT give it away without a fight. (ie we will follow the advice of legal counsel if in any CALEA action is served to SSI, but otherwise we will never release your data)
Internally, sometimes customer usage data, is important to us being able to manage & measure our network’s performance and its quality of delivery of services. (..this is mostly for planning and growth purposes) For instance, we do accumulate usage data on a rolling basis to know how much streaming traffic we see–though this information is NOT tied to any one person’s account but aggregated up for network planning and measuring latency and jitter.
Note also sometimes need to validate customer complaints and service issues on occasion. This means that we will turn on service monitoring level data captures to confirm what customers are seeing with their service. Without these types of monitoring, we often cannot trouble-shoot or solve equipment or latency issues that do occur sometimes with a given customer’s service link. Often the causes of such Internet-connected consumer product issues is equipment related failures that degrade over time–which are very hard to spot w/out monitoring usage data. Note that we do NOT keep such monitoring data, but only use it one time to identify the source of network management or “in-home” customer issues.
Questions / Complaint Process / FCC Compliance
SSI strongly desires to resolve questions, complaints and other problems of its customers and edge service providers in an informal and direct manner that satisfies all interested parties to the greatest extent practicable. Questions, complaints and concerns regarding SSI service or network management practices can be directed to customercare@slopeside.net or by calling our office at 970-281-4477. You can also send a letter to our Winterpark mailing address: Attn: Customer Care, Slopeside Internet, PO Box 1138, Winterpark, CO 80482
Note also that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rules to preserve the Internet as an open platform. Information regarding these rules are available on the FCC’s website at: https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom
If, as a subscriber to SSI’s services, you believes that SSI is not in compliance with the FCC’s rules, you as a subscriber may file an informal complaint with the FCC–though again we urge our subscribers to get in touch directly any time of the day or night to alert us of such issues so they can be quickly resolved. Note that the FCC asks for any informal complaints via this link: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us.
Misc Information
- Name of filer: Slopeside Internet LLC
- FRN: 000171163304
- ISP Type: Future CBRS/5G operator & current Wireless Internet Service Provider
- Services Offered: High speed fixed wireless broadband Internet access using various bands of wireless spectrum, and various types of wireless vendor technology to deliver Internet Access & private network services.
- Effective date of this Disclosure Statement: Oct 1st 2018
- This is Slopeside Internet’s first time released Disclosure Statement and this is a notification of this fact as required by law
References
Here is the text of the Open Internet Order: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-17-166A1.pdf
FCC Disclosures Portal: https://www.fcc.gov/isp-disclosures