Open Internet Statement

Open Internet Principles of VOLstate, Inc.

The Federal Communications Commission issued rules to preserve the Internet as an open platform. These rules went into effect on November 20, 2011 and can be found at this link: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-09-23/html/2011-24259.htm. All Internet service providers are required to post information regarding various issues so that consumers, both residential and business, can make informed choices about choosing an Internet service provider. This document contains information regarding our services and in compliance with the FCC’s rules. The policies contained herein serve as a supplement to the existing terms of service.

The FCC’s rules focus on three primary issues:

• Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services;
• No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful Web sites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; and
• No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
• Reasonable network management. ISPs may engage in reasonable network management to maintain a high quality of service for broadband Internet access.

Network Practices

            ISPs must disclose their network practices, specifically in the four general areas listed below. ISPs may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful

devices, subject to reasonable network management. An ISP may not block consumers

from accessing lawful Web sites, subject to reasonable network management; nor shall the ISP block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network management. ISPs may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service, although, reasonable network management shall not constitute

unreasonable discrimination. The FCC’s rules state that a network management practice is reasonable if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service.

            Congestion Management: Congestion is managed primarily by measuring the used capacity of VOLstate’s network and pro-actively adding bandwidth before saturation occurs.  Beyond that, VOLstate manages some network activity out of necessity to ensure that real time applications perform as expected.  To that end, VOLstate prioritizes certain traffic that is native to the newtwork. Since it is not possible to prioritize voice traffic from other networks, that traffic is treated the same as all other traffic after our shaping for performance. If the network reaches saturation of bandwidth itself due to some extraordinarily high usage, VOLstate will prioritize traffic that we recognize based on standard port usage.

Application-Specific Behavior:  VOLstate will only employ rate control if bandwidth consumption would otherwise cause unacceptable performance for other traffic. File sharing applications are low priority traffic and other applications, out of necessity, have a higher priority such as ssh, telnet, and web traffic.

Device Attachment Rules: At this time, VOLstate does not have any restrictions other than that third party CPE devices must be able to authenticate to our network.

Security: The network is monitored 24 hours per day and unusual activity notifies appropriate personnel. Other security measures include account lockout policies, and encryption of sensitive traffic.

Performance Characteristics

            ISPs must disclose the following network performance characteristics:

Service Description:  VOLstate provides all of its services at this time utilizing last mile facilities from other carriers.  The underlying carrier in essence rents to us this facility and we deploy our service over it. These technologies include T1, Metro Ethernet, ADSL, and Coaxial Cable.  VOLstate uses a combination of copper and fiber circuits for the service delivery.  The data center is owned by VOLstate and supplies services such as authentication, email, web services, email filtering.  VOLstate owns a series of routers and switches that attach to our network and these facilities are a combination of owned and leased facilities from other carriers.  VOLstate makes no guarantees as to the suitability of its broadband service for any particular real time application with the exception of the voice service sold by VOLstate.

Impact of Specialized Services: VOLstate sells a variety of VoIP services. The network reserves anywhere from 5-20% of available bandwidth to prioritize voice services sold by VOLstate in order to give maximum performance of the voice service to the end user.  This will in some cases reduce available bandwidth for other applications.

Commercial Terms

            ISPs must disclose the commercial terms of its broadband Internet access service including those listed below.

            Pricing: All broadband services are sold on a contract basis and a variety of variables go into pricing for each account including: the distance to reach the customer from our nearest POP; which underlying carriers we must use to deliver the service, the term of the service, the bandwidth required.  Questions about contract terms should be emailed to us via our website contact process at www.volstate.net.

Privacy Policies: Browsing information is not stored.  Authentication information is stored for a period of 30 days.  Email is stored for a maximum of 30 days for POP accounts and is set individually by the customer for webmail accounts.  No information is provided to third parties unless proper legal authorization is received.

Pursuant to FCC rules, VOLstate does have the ability to capture customer information in real time and deliver it to law enforcement with proper legal requirements met by law enforcement to us

            Redress Options: Call or email us at our contact numbers listed at www.volstate.net.

FCC Notice

If a customer believes that these open Internet rules are not being met, the customer may file an informal complaint at the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC urges customers to submit any complaints via its website at the following address: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm. Customers may also file a formal complaint at the FCC using Part 76 of the Commission’s rules.