In its June 20, 2007 article "Best and Worst ISPs," PC World magazine reported results from a recent survey of 6,400 readers. The survey showed Insight Broadband 10.0 outranks its Kentucky competitors in overall satisfaction as well as both downstream and upstream speeds and scores above-average marks. AT&T scored below-average and Verizon DSL came in as average in the same speed performance categories.

"The PC World survey echoes what our customers now tell us all the time," said Paul Meltzer, senior vice president of product management at Insight. "We've worked hard to make the choice really simple by being the fastest and hands down best Internet service in our markets. It's nice to see that confirmed by an independent source."

Insight rolled out its Insight Broadband 10.0 service last year to all of its Kentucky customers, offering them download speeds up to 10 Megs per second, 1 Gig of e-mail storage per e-mail account and a free Internet Security Package.

Get Insight Broadband 10.0 Service For Your Home

Looking to switch from dial-up to high-speed Internet? Now you can surf like the wind for less money than you think.

Windstream and ConnectMyHighSpeed are partnering to offer a $5 bill monthly bill credit for a whole year when you order Windstream Broadband service. That's a savings of $60! Choose from a variety of speeds to find the service that's right for your home starting at only $19.95 a month.

You'll get everything you need to experience Internet that's faster and easier to use than dial-up:

• Forget busy signals and waiting—your connection is always on
• Help everyone in the family keep in touch with up to 5 e-mail addresses with your account
• Visit all your favorite sites without waiting for images and videos to load—the faster the connection, the more exciting things you can experience

Plus, you can rest easy knowing you are getting service from a company with a long and proud history. Windstream is focused on providing advanced local communications and entertainment products and services.

Find Windstream Broadband Plans and Pricing Available in Your Area

Goodmail Systems Inc. today announced that Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon are supporting the company's CertifiedEmail trusted class e-mail for users of their e-mail services. Already used by AOL, AT&T and Yahoo!, CertifiedEmail messages are certified to be authentic e-mail from legitimate senders and are specially marked with a blue ribbon envelope so that consumers know which commercial and non-profit e-mails in their inbox are real.

Introduced in 2006, CertifiedEmail is a trusted-class delivery option offered only to qualifying, legitimate commercial and non-profit e-mailers for messages to existing customers and users who have specifically opted in to receive such communications. Once accredited by Goodmail, these senders' e-mail messages are delivered with cryptographically secure tokens which participating ISPs detect. CertifiedEmail messages are labeled with a unique blue ribbon icon in the e-mail program, enabling consumers to immediately distinguish the legitimate messages they want to receive from messages of unknown authenticity or safety. The announcement follows a national poll that indicated the majority of consumers would be more likely to open and read e-mail if the sending company displays a certified icon in the e-mail program.

"With spam and phishing hitting historic highs even in the last six months, we have seen the limits of technologies which attempt to filter out the bad e-mail," said Goodmail co-founder and CEO Richard Gingras. "Consumers want their e-mail system to let them know which e-mail is real and safe to open and act on. They want an end to the frustration of having to guess whether an e-mail is real or not. These ISPs—and the senders that send CertifiedEmail—care about their customers' safety."

Users of participating ISPs need do nothing extra to receive CertifiedEmail. Their existing webmail programs that they currently use to read e-mail will simply show a new icon, a blue ribbon envelope, that means a message is a CertifiedEmail. The icon appears in both the inbox list view and in a special pane above the message when opened. The blue ribbon icon is universal across all ISPs and mailbox providers supporting CertifiedEmail.

For more information, check out the press release.

Windstream says it produced record broadband customer growth in the first quarter ending March 31, 2007. The company reportedly added approximately 59,000 net broadband customers during that time period, a quarterly record. Windstream now has more than 715,000 total broadband customers.

"Our company is off to a great start for 2007 with solid execution by our team during the quarter selling broadband." said Jeff Gardner, President and CEO. "With our singular focus on this business, Windstream is well positioned to continue delivering solid results and strong and sustainable cash flows."

Windstream was formed through the spinoff of Alltel's landline business and a merger with VALOR Communications Group in 2006, creating the largest telecommunications and entertainment company focused on rural America with 3.4 access lines in 16 states.

The company says it is proud of its legacy of serving mostly rural customers, combining strong financial performance with quality products, reliable services and exceptional customer service.

Check out the Windstream page for more information and to see if Windstream high-speed broadband Internet service is available in your area.

Windstream, in partnership with YouSendIt, recently announced the availability of Windstream EZ Send, a fast and easy way for customers to share large files of almost any kind. The new service is the first such offering by an Internet service provider.

Windstream says EZ Send provides a cost-effective solution for sending and receiving critical business documents and other files, saving time and the cost of alternative solutions, including overnight shipping. Powered by YouSendIt, the service allows users to send large files—up to 2 GB per file&mdashdirectly from any browser. Windstream customers now can send files up to 200 times larger than common e-mail attachment limits in the industry.

The service gives business customers an easy, branded way to send large files, bypassing costly FTP systems or home-grown solutions. For residential customers, the service provides an easy way to share audio, video and data files without the need to purchase expensive software or hardware.

"Windstream customers now have a fast, easy and free way to share large files with their friends, family and clients," said Ric Crane, Windstream senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "This service gives our customers another user-friendly way to connect to their world and efficiently do business."

Customers can send files up to 100 MB in size for free that others can download for seven days. For an additional cost, customers can upgrade their service to send files up to 2 GB, allow downloading for 14 days, branding on file deliveries and tracking of downloads for 30 days.

"We are excited to be working with Windstream to provide their customers with a simple, easy way to send and receive large files," said Ivan Koon, CEO of YouSendIt. "With the growth of high-speed connections there is increased business and consumer demand for sending large files like audio, video and graphics content. YouSendIt enables service providers like Windstream to offer their customers a cost effective way to replace courier services and a user-friendly and secure way to replace FTP."

For more information, check out the Windstream press release.

CenturyTel was ranked the highest among Telecommunications providers in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom in online customer service, according to a study conducted by the Customer Respect Group and reported in their "First Quarter 2007 Online Customer Respect Study of the Telecommunications Industry."

The Customer Respect Group studied the Web sites of 54 leading Telecommunications companies, focusing specifically upon ease of use; communication; how well the company responded to specific questions through one-on-one communication; and trust (whether the site could be trusted with personal data) to compile a Customer Respect Index (CRI) for each company.

CenturyTel earned a CRI rating of 8.1 (out of a possible 10), well ahead of the industry average of 5.9. The closest American competitors were AT&T, scoring 7.1, Verizon Wireless, scoring 7.0 and Cablevision, scoring 6.9.

"I am pleased with this achievement and the special recognition we have received," said CenturyTel Chairman and CEO, Glen Post. "I am confident that we will continue to serve our customers well and meet the challenges of this dynamic industry."

A full industry scorecard and further explanation of the criteria can be found at www.customerrespect.com.

RCN announced that it has launched RCN Journal on its portal as a free service to existing and prospective customers. The new service combines personal Web page publishing, essential blogging features and an online video subscription service in one interface.

"RCN is leading the way by providing their customers with a clearly differentiated broadband enabled solution," said Ted Briscoe, CEO of Vibe Solutions Group. "With RCN Journal, users can create their own personal Web presence in seconds, absolutely free. They can also aggregate and personalize thousands of online video titles into their own channel viewing experience."

Journal is part personal Web page and part video content aggregator. It allows consumers the ability to publish photos, video, audio or text with drag-and-drop technology. Journal combines this publishing experience with a video content aggregator, called My Channels, allowing consumers to watch, share, personalize and publish their own video channels, ranging from professional to user-submitted content.

For more information on this new service, check out the RCN press release.

BigBand Networks Inc., a provider of broadband multimedia infrastructure for video, voice and data, announced that it has signed a five-year agreement with Suddenlink Communications. The cable operator is using the BigBand FastFlow® Broadband Provisioning Manager (BPM) to provision and manage DOCSIS® services such as High-Speed Data (HSD) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) across a geographically dispersed, multi-vendor network environment.

Last May, Suddenlink closed an acquisition of cable systems that serve approximately 900,000 subscribers in parts of eight states from Cox Communications. Suddenlink closed an additional acquisition in July of cable systems that serve approximately 240,000 customers in parts of four states from Charter Communications. Cox had been using FastFlow to provision its systems, and the new agreement extends FastFlow's coverage to the balance of Suddenlink's cable systems. Suddenlink also uses BigBand's Broadband Multimedia-Services Router (BMR®) and Cuda® cable modem termination system (CMTS) platform for video, voice and data services in multiple locations.

"Suddenlink has very quickly grown into one of the larger cable operators in the U.S., and BigBand's FastFlow made that transition much easier," said Jeff Strout, Suddenlink's vice president of IP engineering and operations. "FastFlow's intuitive user interface gave us extensive visibility into service delivery on our new, multi-vendor networks and made service deployment much easier than we anticipated. The platform is also designed to scale well to support additional growth."

FastFlow and other provisioning management software applications have become increasingly popular for service provisioning as cable networks have evolved from the closed systems of the past to the standards-based, multi-vendor environments of today. FastFlow is interoperable with a wide range of devices from multiple vendors, including cable modems, set-top boxes, multimedia terminal adaptors, and CMTS. Though FastFlow is adept at provisioning widely distributed networks, such as Suddenlink's, the product also performs well in centralized networks.

"Suddenlink's decision to use BigBand's FastFlow BPM in the systems it acquired from Cox, and to expand its use of the product to its other systems is a powerful testament to the solution's scalability and multi-vendor capabilities," said Pirjo Tuomi, senior vice president of worldwide sales for BigBand Networks. "FastFlow is designed to allow cable operators like Suddenlink to make service deployment seamless, and maintain subscriber satisfaction as new services are installed."

For more information, check out the press release BigBand Networks Announces Five-Year Contract with Suddenlink Communications.

GameRail recently announced that it has completed a direct connection to the Charter high-speed Internet service network. The new connection bypasses the Internet and allows Charter high-speed Internet subscribers in Missouri, St. Louis, and St. Louis Metro East to decrease ping times to online game servers throughout the country by 25 to 75 percent. GameRail's nationwide network directly connects gamers to game servers. Online gamers with broadband Internet service from Charter now have the shortest and fastest path to performance game servers offering the popular titles.

Charter customers can see for themselves the improved performance by simply registering at www.gamerail.com. "The GameRail network is further expanded with Charter Communications' Midwestern footprint. Our network's reach today covers most major peering points with partners servicing broadband subscribers from as far as Fairbanks, Alaska and as near as Chesterfield, Missouri. Access providers and game server hosts continue to jump on the rail in order to offer their customers the best online gaming experience possible" said Blake Ashby, GameRails' President.

For more information, check out the press release Charter High-Speed Internet Customers Gain Direct Access to GameRail.

A broad array of technology companies, media organizations, trade associations and nonprofits recently announced their collaboration in launching Project Online Safety, an educational campaign focused on promoting Internet safety for children. The initiative provides parents and children with a centralized online resource of Internet safety tools and educational materials at www.ProjectOnlineSafety.com, and supports and encourages the broadcast of a series of related national public service advertisements (PSAs) being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Ad Council.

Project Online Safety is part of an ongoing, industry-wide effort working with leading advocacy organizations to educate parents and children about the importance of online safety. The partners of the initiative that are investing resources to support online safety programs are AT&T, BlogSafety.com, Cable in the Classroom (CIC), Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Facebook, Fox Interactive Media (MySpace), Internet Education Foundation, National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Network Solutions, News Corp., Qwest Communications, Time Warner Cable and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

"Charter is proud to join this industry-wide effort to help make online safety information available to our nation's youth," said Jay Carlson, senior vice president of information technology for Charter Communications. "With the provision of powerful communication tools comes responsibility, and Charter takes the responsibility of raising awareness and education very seriously."

This educational campaign addresses concerns regarding abuse of the Internet to victimize children online. Many companies are currently taking important measures to reduce the potential threats posed by Internet predators and to prosecute individuals who utilize the Internet to prey upon children. For example, companies participating in Project Online Safety are conducting a variety of activities, including national traveling education programs; conducting extensive law enforcement training sessions; and designating specific online locations where parents, guardians and children can learn how they can have safer and more rewarding experiences on the Internet.

In conjunction with the initiative, a new online portal at www.ProjectOnlineSafety.com serves as a central repository where parents, guardians, teachers and children can access numerous Internet safety tools and educational materials, which are made available by the participating companies and organizations. The site serves as a portal through which users may access resources on specific topic areas of interest, such as parental control technologies, ways to report trouble online, cyberbullying, and safe web sites for children. In addition, users can also click on a participating technology company or advocacy organization web page to review their online safety materials and read more about their efforts to help protect children's online experiences.

For more information on this project, read the National Cable & Telecommunications Association press release.