About Opus One Business Services

Because many businesses are new to the Internet, we have prepared this brochure to explain the features and pricing of our most popular business services. One of the few things not covered in this document is DSL service, which is discussed elsewhere. For comprehensive pricing information, see our pricing page.

All Opus One business services come with a 24-hour "no busy signal" guarantee: if you call our servers and get a busy signal, we'll immediately add new phone lines and modems. We believe that businesses need immediate access and we strive to make sure that you have that access without frustration.

Table of Contents

• Basic Services
• Additional Services
• Pricing
• WWW Services
• Discounts
• For Further Information
• Frequently Asked Questions

• a single POP/shell account with unlimited aliases. Think of this as a single user's access to the Internet. What "unlimited aliases" means is that you can have many names for the same person, but they all still represent the same person. For example, if your sales manager is Ian Weck, you could have mailboxes called "Ian," "Weck," "Ian.Weck," "Sales," "Info," and "IW." However, these would all be delivered to Ian's single electronic mail box.
• a single domain name. If your company's name was Tucson Trailers, you might want to have the domain name "Trailers.COM." We apply for the domain name and set it up for you. Your electronic mail addresses will be at your own domain name.
  
• WWW server access. This lets you put your HTML pages on the World Wide Web under your own domain name and directory. For example, if you were Tucson Trailers and wanted to put information on the Web, your home page URL would be: http://www.trailers.com/. You can use as much of your disk space pool on WWW pages as you wish, which is usually sufficient for all but the largest organizations. You can also use our pre-scripted WWW functions as well, which include basic support for forms as well as an automatic FAXback service. WWW server access includes 6 Gb of data transfer per month.
• Access to our SLIP, PPP, and shell communications servers. You are issued a password which will let you use our dial-in servers for either direct SLIP/PPP communications or to connect to our minicomputer network for shell access. Most businesses choose to use PPP, but you are free to do whatever suits you best. Our communications servers are all digital at speeds up to 56,000 bps (v.34/v.42/v.42bis/v.90) or you can connect using ISDN. There is no surcharge for high-speed connections.
• Electronic mail, FAX, and pager services. You can use our outgoing FAX and pager services for local (or toll-free) phone calls. If you want to do nationwide or international FAXing, we will charge back the long distance costs on a cost-recovery basis.
• Installation support and assistance. We will help you get connected and we'll work with you to make your software work with our systems. For most popular packages, we have pre-written scripts to make life easier. We do not sell software, but we would be happy to recommend appropriate software to make your connection efficient and trouble-free.
• Anonymous FTP service. We will move files from your directories to our anonymous FTP area up to four times a year for no additional charge.
• A block of storage of 25 MBytes (about 5000 pages of text) and dial-in time of 130 hours per month (about 6 hours per business day).

• DSL service. This has become tremendously popular and we are very happy with the power which it has put in the hands of our clients at a very reasonable price. DSL, however, is so complex that we have moved the DSL service descriptions to a different place on our web site.
• Additional user. Although a single user can have unlimited "aliases," many businesses find it convenient to give each Internet user their own account and separate mail boxes. Additional users add additional disk storage and access time, at a greatly discounted rate. If you have five people in your company, an Opus One business account is actually less expensive than five bargain-basement personal accounts!
• Additional domain names. Some companies have a need for multiple domain names. We are happy to apply for, provide primary name service for, and find secondary name service for additional domain names. These names are considered "aliases" to your original domain name.
• Anonymous FTP service. If you see a need to make frequent changes (e.g., more than 4 times per year) to your Anonymous FTP offerings, there is an additional charge.
• Private WWW service. If you need to write your own WWW scripts, special logging and reporting, anticipate a huge amount of traffic (greater than 6 Gb/month), or need specific server customizations and assistance, you may want a private WWW server.
• Dedicated connection service. If your company has already installed a LAN at your offices, you may want to run a dedicated phone line to our servers instead of having people dial-up constantly. We support analog connections using modems, ISDN, DSL service, frame relay, and dedicated connections of T1 speed or higher.
• Additional disk space, data transfer, or hours. We are happy to make our systems available to you in whatever quantity you need. Additional access time, data transfer, and/or disk space are available at reasonable marginal costs.
• Consulting services. Opus One is in the consulting business and we specialize in networks. If you need technical support beyond installation, we may have the expertise you're looking for.

To keep everything in one place, we have put all pricing information on a single web page.

WWW Services

The main problem with WWW is that everyone wants to have a short URL. Unfortunately, because of the way that the WWW was designed, this is very expensive in the amount of resources it consumes. So, we have services which consume small amounts of resources which don't cost a lot and we have services which consume large amounts of resources which are priced appropriately.

1. The simplest WWW service is included in our Your Business Service. With this service, your home page URL must include some special string which separates it from other Opus One users. For example, if your company is Tucson Tractors and your domain name is "tractors.com," then your URL might be http://www.tractors.com/tractors/. The nice things about this approach are that (1) it's guaranteed to work all the time and (2) there is no additional charge.

2. The next step up from that is what we call "Multihome" service, or "Software Multihome." With Multihome service, your home page URL would change to be simply "http://www.tractors.com/." However, this only works for about 99.3% of the browsers out there-any browser released in the past 4 years, generally. The rest will see something different. The browsers primarily affected will be AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe users who haven't upgraded since 1994, Lynx 2.4 users, and some other particularly old and crufty browsers.

   What the remaining 0.7% will see, instead, is a page which says something like "Your browser is kind of old; what page did you really want to see?" And then users will get a list of all of the other Multihome Opus One customers and they'll have to pick the one they really wanted. Most companies which sell WWW hosting service are offering this service; they just don't want to tell you.

   The Multihome service has no monthly charge, but there is a $100 installation fee. As long as you are buying other services from Opus One, your Multihome add-on is free. Multihome is good for small businesses which want to have the "prestige" of a short URL but aren't really depending on the WWW for a significant part of their business.

3. If you want a guaranteed service that will work all the time, we have a true multihoming service. This gives you a dedicated IP address, shared with no other user, and a URL that matches. So, your http://www.tractors.com/ would work 100% of the time for 100% of the people, no questions asked. If you're a serious business and want to be sure that everyone gets the same message, dedicated IP multihoming is your safest and most professional bet. However, there's a downside---because it costs us so much in the way of resources to offer this service, we have a correspondingly higher price of $50/month.

4. At the high end of our WWW service is the private WWW server. This gives you the most control, the greatest flexibility, and the highest level of customer support. Dedicated WWW servers start with the equivalent functionality of a true multihome server and work their way up from there. A private, dedicated WWW server can also have some multihome servers under it, particularly useful if you're a large company or want to re-sell WWW service to other businesses. Private WWW servers are discussed in greater detail in the next section.
   

The following table summarizes our spectrum of WWW service offerings:

Service Name	Characteristics	Costs
Your Business Service	Includes simple WWW access, with longer URL.	No additional cost
Multihoming	Shortened URL, but may not work for all users	One-time $100 install fee
Dedicated IP Multhoming	Shortened URL; most professional image for all clients	$50 per month
Private WWW server	High-end for large businesses or WWW resellers; many additional features	$300/month

Discounts:

Certain other combinations of services are also automatically discounted between 5% and 15%. For example, a combination of Your Business Service and Dedicated Line service is discounted by 15%.

You may also avoid certain installation fees (including the Internet Presence Package installation) by signing an agreement which commits you to a service term of one year or more.

For Further Information

We promise that we won't try and sell you a service that you don't need. In fact, about 30% of the queries that come to us we refer to other businesses.

Opus One
1404 East Lind Road
Tucson, Arizona 85719
Voice: 520-324-0494
FAX: 520-324-0495
Email: sales@Opus1.COM

In general, normal companies will be perfectly happy with the Your Business Service for their WWW presence. The main reasons you would want a dedicated server only come up if you're interested in reselling WWW space to someone else or if WWW services are a major part of your business. If you just want to let people know about yourself and your products, you will probably fit in just fine with the Your Business Service.

If you are in need of assistance in setting up your WWW presence, we can provide you with the names of several fine designers who have worked closely with us in the past.

2. What kind of modem should I buy?

Thanks for asking! You probably have saved yourself a lot of grief! We strongly recommend a name brand modem. We have had excellent success with the US Robotics Sportster external modem and the Multitech ZDX. They're both small modems, cost about $60, and are available immediately by calling 800-MAC-LISA (PC/Mac Connection).

If you can possibly afford it, we strongly recommend ISDN or even DSL instead of analog modems. The difference in reliability is astounding.

If you want a 56K compatible modem, our equipment is V.90 and K56Flex compatible and any V.90 or K56Flex modem should work with ours. Note that this specifically does not include US Robotics X2 equipment. However, be aware that line quality severely affects connection speed, and we see customers with V.90 modems connecting at anywhere from 24Kbps to 53Kbps. Your mileage may vary and probably will.

We have also had OK success with other name brand equipment. We specifically do not recommend the Hayes Optima, most internal modems, and any modem which uses the Windows CPU as part of the modem engine (you can usually tell these because they cost a fraction of any other modem and require Windows).

We have found that saving $10 to $50 on a modem by buying a "no-name" brand is almost never worth it.

3. I have a Macintosh. What software do I need? (sometimes: I have <insert-software-name-here>; will it work?

It depends on whether you have a new Mac or an old Mac. If your Mac was purchased recently (say in the last 2 or 3 years), you should be running a recent version of System 7 (or even System 8) and Open Transport. You can use either the Apple-supplied PPP stack or FreePPP. Most people, including our own staff, get excellent results with the built-in dial-up networking support on the Macintosh.

If you have an older Macintosh, you will need MacTCP v2.0.6 and a SLIP or PPP link access protocol. We have scripts for the three popular ones: MacSLIP, InterSLIP, and MacPPP/FreePPP. We recommend MacSLIP, even though it is not freeware, because it has the greatest set of features. MacSLIP also supports PPP, by the way.

4. I have a PC running Windows. What software do I need? (sometimes: I have <insert-software-name-here>; will it work?

There are many flavors of Windows. For Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows 2000, the built-in Dial-up Networking software works very well.

We are no longer able to provide recommendations for or support of Windows versions prior to Windows 95.

5. I have a PC running Windows NT. What do I do?

RAS works great, either in SLIP or PPP mode.

6. How many modems do you have?

You don't care. What you do care about is the ratio of customers to modems. The answer is 5:1. That's what we've seen is a reasonable value. As our client base grows, we add modems. Generally, we don't have a problem with busy signals. We have had some periods in the past when US West made us wait 8 to 12 weeks for phone lines, but we think we're catching up on them now.

Something else you care about is the total number of modems compared to our outbound Internet link. We have adequate bandwidth to support approximately 900 modems. We have less than a tenth of that connected.

A third question you might ask is "what is your business model?" The answer is simple: we want to provide the best service possible to a small number of clients. This is very different from ISPs who wish to make the greatest profits possible. Companies like that have a strong incentive to cut costs at the central site in order to maximize profits. We don't do that, because that's not the kind of service we would want to run. Opus One Consulting is our biggest customer. We're not going to cut the quality of our own access to the Internet just to make a few more dollars.

7. What about 800 number access?

We are not set up to do 800-number billback. However, we have had very good success with personal 800-number service from AT&T, which you can contract and negotiate rates for on your own. Typically, we pay about 18 cents a minute for long-distance access during prime time using this service. Call if you need more details.

8. I talked to <insert-ISP-here> and they said that I could <insert-action-here>. How come I can't do that on your systems?

Our service model requires that we provide the best service we can to all clients. Typically, we say you can't do something either because it would let you (accidentally) deny service to other clients or because the management burden on our part would be so high as to make it uneconomical to provide the service. An example of the first action would be "writing my own CGI scripts" and of the second would be "getting a full alt.* news feed."

Frankly, if you can find someone who is willing to put you in a situation where you could bring down their systems through a simple programming error, we wonder if you really want to work with that kind of a business. After all, their other customers might not be as careful as you are.

8a. I talked to <insert-ISP-here> and they said that I could have <insert-very-large-number> hours of connect time. How come you only give us 130?

One of the greatest marginal costs in this business is telecommunications services. We price our service based on what we consider average use. We have looked at several years of accounting data and discovered that the average person dials in about 32 hours a month. We basically quadrupled that and said that we can afford to have you log in that many hours and charge a fair price which reflects usage.

If a provider is willing to offer you unlimited service or some other very large number of hours, it's because they're betting that you will not take advantage of them---or, that only a few people will. We don't want to run our business that way. We buy resources from companies like US West in the hopes that we have enough to satisfy demand but not so much extra that we're wasting money. If we were interested in having 10,000 clients, we might be able to play the numbers game and make it look like we're giving you a better deal. However, that's not what our business model looks like.

Finally, make sure "unlimited" means what you think it means. Several of the Tucson ISPs call their dial-in service unlimited, but then define "unlimited" to mean "unlimited within some arbitrary limits we set up."

9. You seem to have a large number of options. Let's say I want the same package everyone else signs up for. Can you tell me exactly what the costs are going to be?

Of course. We're not hiding anything. The first month you sign up with us with a single dial-in user, your first bill will be $190. That's broken into three parts: $70 for the InterNIC which pays for your domain name for two years; $60 for installation fees, which pays for our time to set up your account, your domain name, any installation support you need, and other details; and $60 for service charges. The second month, your bill will be $60.

If you decide that you don't want a domain name (or you want to defer getting it until you've had more experience), then you don't have to pay the InterNIC charge of $70. This also assumes that the domain name you want is in the .COM/.NET/.ORG space; if you want a different kind of domain name, such as .US or .MX, the NIC fees for that top-level domain may be different.