Past Issues:

Citynet Customer Newsletter: The Top 10 Reasons You Need CityVault by Citynet for Your Servers
Summary: Why Your Servers Need CityVault; 2009 Core Value Award Winners
Date: 06/01/2009

Citynet Customer Newsletter: Citynet CEO Jim Martin Wins SBA Award
Summary: Citynet CEO Jim Martin Wins SBA Award; Meet the Newest Member of the Citynet Team; Recession Proof Your IT Spending
Date: 05/01/2009

Citynet Customer Newsletter: Learn How to Thrive in this Economy!
Summary: Coming Up Next Week: Learn How to Thrive in this Economy!; What Computer Viruses Teach Us; Easily Back-Up ALL of Your Important Data; Citynet VP Craig Behr Receives Special Recognition
Date: 04/01/2009

Citynet Customer Newsletter: Be Prepared for Spring Storms
Summary: Be Prepared for Spring Storms; Top 10 Reasons to Backup Your Data with CityVault; CityVault Customer Testimonial
Date: 03/01/2009

Citynet Customer Newsletter: WV Customers New Dial-Up Account Procedures
Summary: How to Modify Your Citynet Dial-Up Account for 10-Digit Dialing
Date: 02/01/2009

Citynet Customer Newsletter: Happy New Year!
Summary: Happy New Year!; Make 2009 the Year to Conquer SPAM; Anti-Spam Email Tips; Be On the Alert for New Phishing Schemes; Citynet's Ben Randolph Promoted to Vice-President
Date: 01/01/2009

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2008: December 2008   |  November 2008   |  October 2008   |  September 2008   |  August 2008   |  July 2008   |  June 2008
May 2008   |  April 2008   |  March 2008   |  February 2008   |  January 2008

2007: December 2007   |  November 2007   |  October 2007   |  September 2007   |  August 2007   |  July 2007   |  June 2007
May 2007   |  April 2007   |  March 2007   |  February 2007   |  January 2007

2006: December 2006   |  November 2006   |  October 2006   |  September 2006   |  August 2006   |  July 2006   |  June 2006
May 2006   |  April 2006   |  March 2006   |  February 2006   |  January 2006

Older: December 2005   |  November 2005   |  October 2005   |  September 2005   |  August 2005   |  January 2003
November/December 2002   |  October 2002   |  September 2002   |  August 2002   |  July 2002   |  June 2002   |  May 2002
April 2002   |  March 2002   |  February 2002   |  January 2002   |  December 2001   |  November 2001   |  October 2001
September 2001   |  August 2001

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March 2008

Inside this issue: Growth and Jobs, Executive Training, New WV Area Code 681 is coming, Our People

Growth and Jobs

Last month Citynet completed the sale of our Wholesale Division to Zayo Broadband. The transaction (which formally closed on February 15, 2008) will have no effect on Citynet’s growing Retail Operation, Retail’s customers or the employees.

This announcement represents a key strategic move for Citynet according to Jim Martin (President and CEO of Citynet), "finalizing the Zayo transaction provides Citynet with a long-term strategic bandwidth partner in Zayo and allows us to recapitalize our Retail Operation as a leading regional telecommunications provider. The sale provides Citynet with added capital resources to expand and grow our Retail operation through new market expansions and strategic business acquisitions. This is win-win opportunity that greatly improves our ability to serve the needs of our growing customer base."

As Citynet concentrates on our core business of being THE regional provider of telecommunications products and services we will be adding to our staff. We currently have the following career openings at Citynet.

• Vice President of Sales: Candidates must have 7-10 years of successful sales experience with at least 4 years in a sales management role. Experience in Telecom or Data Services sales is preferred.
• Regional Sales Representatives: Must have a proven sales background and be able to develop customers in a specific assigned territory. Openings are in: Charleston, Huntington, Beckley, Parkersburg, Clarksburg/Morgantown, and Wheeling.
• Marketing Manager: Position is for a very creative communicator with experience in promotion, writing, and sales support.
• Web Applications Developer and a Database Administrator: Skilled in ColdFusion with SQL server database experience a requirement. We have two positions available.
• Network Engineers and Technicians: We have several openings for experienced Network Engineers and Computer/Network technicians with a minimum of 4 years experience in computers, networks and software, or a candidate that is Cisco certified.

Full job descriptions and information on these positions can be found at: jobs.citynet.net. You may send resumes to resume@citynet.net

Executive Training:

Over the past several days Citynet department heads have been attending in-depth training provided by California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U). The training is part of a business/education partnership between Citynet and Cal U. Cal U senior staff has been providing our department heads with excellent training on Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The university provides this training on a voluntary basis to all its staff and students and now to Citynet.

The training focuses on the seven habits with specific emphasis on how each person can utilize the training to improve their personal and professional effectiveness. Plans are for all Citynet employees to be trained on a voluntary basis. "The training will be of great benefit not only to our employees but also to our customers. We will use the skills learned and, in many instances, relearned to better communicate with our customers" said Frank Boscarillo, COO.

Bill Morgan, Director – Human Resources said "…this has been a wonderful partnership with Cal U. Citynet received world class training, and Cal U now has an endowed scholarship in Citynet’s name. The scholarship will be awarded to a student majoring in computer science, engineering, or a related field of study."

New Area Code 681 is coming

In case you missed the announcement on January 29, 2008, and a subsequent ruling, the West Virginia Public Service Commission voted to add a new area code sometime in the coming year. In their decision the PSC ordered that the new area code "overlay" the entire state, meaning that after a certain date new subscribers to services requiring a telephone number will be issued a number beginning with the new area code. Those now using the existing, 60 plus years old – 304, will continue to retain their phone number. The North American Numbering Plan Administration has decided that the new area code for West Virginia will be 681.

Why, after all these years is a new area code necessary? Actually, this isn’t a new issue to Citynet. The state has rapidly been using up existing available numbers for quite some time. While there are only about 1.8 million people in West Virginia, we issue multiple numbers to many people in way of landline phones, fax machines, beeper/pagers, cell phones, new VoIP digital phones, etc.

In a recent article in The State Journal, WV Consumer Advocate, Billy Jack Craig was quoted "More than 7 million useable number combinations exist within a given area code", Gregg said. The reason West Virginia, with just 1.8 million people, is running out of numbers is because the 304 area code is running out of new three-digit exchange numbers. The increase in cell phones and pagers has taken up most of the remaining exchanges, he said."

Jim Martin, President/CEO of Citynet adds, "Citynet will be continually updating our customers of this change and will be implementing the new area code along with the rest of our state’s telecommunications providers. We will keep our customers informed so that the introduction of the new 681 Area Code will be as smooth as possible.

Our People

This month we are featuring two of our behind the scenes "go to" folks at Citynet. If you’ve visited our Bridgeport HQ, you’ve probably met our Administrative Assistant, Lisa Dorman. In Columbus, quietly working away at making certain our switching is in top notch form is Randy Showalter.

Randy Showalter, Switch Engineering and Operations, Retail Operations. Randy’s 21 year telecommunications career began while he was stationed in Hawaii with the US Navy. Since then, he has held management positions at companies supplying services to Indiana Bell and AT&T, and later with Litel, which became Qwest. He holds a number of professional certifications. At Citynet, Randy is responsible for maintaining switch integrity and ensuring that scaleable, reliable technologies are deployed to our voice customers. Randy is based in Columbus, OH.
randy.showalter@citynet.net

Lisa Dorman, Administrative Assistant. Lisa joined Citynet as a technician in our Technical Support Center and quickly moved into her new role of providing support to our team of Citynet executives. She is originally from Cumberland, MD and holds an AA degree in Mental Health Technology and a BS in Elementary/Middle School Education. A brief stint as a counselor was followed by teaching in schools in Maryland, Georgia, and California. She joined Citynet after working at TeleTech in Morgantown, WV. Lisa is based in Bridgeport, WV.
lisa.dorman@citynet.net


Comments and suggestions are always welcome. editor@citynet.net