As the days drop away from December and 2007 quickly draws to a close, we wish to extend our Happiest of Holiday greetings to you and your family. This time of year is filled with Christmas shopping, holiday parties, tree and home decorating and the many other holiday activities that fill the limited days left in December. We hope you take time to enjoy the season with your friends and family.

All of us at Genext wish all of you, our valued customers, a happy and healthy holiday season. We are, as always, grateful for the support you have given us throughout the years. Genext is a successful local company because of you, our loyal customers.

In the coming New Year, expect more from Genext. We plan to continue our focus on providing affordable bundled solutions; Internet, TV and Voice...Bundled on One Simple Bill. We will be adding more entertaining and high definition programming to the Genext TV lineup. As well, we will continue to work diligently on streamlining our processes for easy signups, quality service and reliable up time. We anticipate 2008 to be another exciting year.

On Wednesday, December 12th, between the hours of 10pm and 7am Genext performed final testing for our long awaited Network Migration. It has been a painstaking endeavor to say the least. Genext had encountered a series of issues earlier this quarter that were beyond our control. Along with our contracted engineers, Genext continued to investigate the source of the issues that prevented us from completing the migration to our new network.

It has been a bumpy road. Over 2 months of late nights, often sleepless, with many scheduled maintenance windows where we performed firmware updates and patches as well as the disassembly of equipment, replacement of various components, rewiring, re-testing, reconfiguring etc., you get the picture. And now, we are confident and ready to complete the transition!

A notice will be sent in the coming days to customers that will be required to make changes. We have performed all the necessary steps and confirmed, re-confirmed and confirmed once again that we are indeed ready to migrate. We are now confident in a smooth transition.

We are all excited for this upgrade as it will increase the Genext Networks capacity 10 fold, while increasing the reliability and redundancy of the services you have come to rely on. The addition of our own IP addresses registered directly to Genext will allow us to provide multi-homed (redundant) upstream connections.

We wish to thank you for your patience. We have worked hard to provide you with the highest quality network that will ensure continued quality of service and a more reliable and robust set of services as we continue to grow and expand in the future.

Now you can enjoy faster Internet speeds at no extra charge; or better yet, pay less each month. Now our 3Mbps/384Kbps Chelan Fiber Internet is up to 6Mbps for the 3Mpbs price! That's a $10 Savings vs. the 2007 pricing! Please note the correction on our prior notice. If you already had a 6Mbps connection, we're going to lower your price for January's billing! Call us crazy but it's the only fair thing to do.

Due to necessary upgrades on the PUD network, the new speeds went into effect on or about the 12th of December (just in time for last minute online gift shopping!). If you aren't noticing the increased speeds, please let us know. There may be a few locations that weren't upgraded due to complexities on the fiber node. If you're not getting the new speed now, please email support@genext.net and we'll get you taken care of.

As you be aware, the Washington State Department of Revenue placed a "Sales and Use" tax on the Fiber Internet Service that customers receive via the Chelan County PUD Fiber Network. At a time when the FCC and our Nations Congressional leaders have protected the Internet from taxation, the Washington State DOR decided to go against this federal policy and place a tax on PUD fiber access. It is our understanding that this tax is not being levied on other Internet access services like DSL, Wireless or Cable wholesale services, only PUD Fiber!

Since 2005, Service Providers on the Chelan PUD Network have been charged sales tax on the wholesale services they purchase for subscriber access. Most, if not all of our competition, have been passing this cost on to their customers.

Genext began accruing taxes back in 2005, and up until now, we have chosen to absorb that additional expense. However, with the new increased cost of Fiber Service resulting from the approval of the new rate structure by Chelan PUD Commissions this last year, we are not able to absorb both increases. As of January 1st, all Chelan County Fiber Connections will be charged a $1.75 flat rate "recovery" fee. The monies generated as a result of this fee does not cover the additional expenses incurred by Genext, it does, however, serve to offset the addition of these increased costs. We will continue to work hard offsetting price increases as best we can in the future and thank you for your understanding.

New rates are as follows:

Residential Fiber Internet

Special VLAN's

It has been many years since we have been forced to increase our rates on Chelan County Fiber Services and we have worked to offset these costs by offering additional value added services such as our E-Mail Security, as well as additional email addresses; 5 included with your broadband account with increased storage upon request!

We sincerely regret this obligatory rate increase and thank you for your understanding. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call for more information. Thank you for your support and continued patronage, we look forward to continuing to provide you with exceptional service and reliability for years to come.

This time of year can be hard on the budget and one area we tend to forget about is the growing energy bill. Overall energy use increases by heating our home to combat the freezing temperatures, lighting our house with holiday décor and keeping the house lit more hours of the day, as the sun hibernates. There are, however, plenty of ways you can save on energy costs this holiday season.

Below are a few simple ideas as well as some major investments to help you save energy.

• Look for LED holiday bulbs. The average holiday light uses 5 to 7 watts per bulb and some older strings use up to 10 watts. The new LED lights use less than half a watt per bulb and are also shatterproof, water resistant and safe to touch.



• Don't like the look of LED's? Downsize to miniature lights. They use up to 70 percent less energy and last much longer than larger bulbs.



• Get Programmable Thermostats. You can set temperatures according to times of the day, so you're not wasting energy when you're not home or when you're asleep.



• Admit it: You'll never remember to turn the lights off. That's why you need to install automatic timers both indoors and out.



• Dim the Lights. Using a bulb at 90 percent brightness—or dimmed only 10 percent—will save about 10 percent in electricity and double the life of a bulb. Dimming to 50 percent saves 40 percent in electricity and can extend the bulb life by 20 times. Lighting control systems can do this automatically, allowing you to save more energy.



• It's not just the holiday lights that run up your energy bill: It's also all the cooking. You're probably not using your oven as efficiently as you could be. Sure, it's fun to peek at the pies as they cook, but the temperature inside your oven drops as much as 25 degrees every time you open the door. So resist the temptation to open the oven and use the oven light instead.



• The dishwasher is your friend. A load of dishes cleaned in a dishwasher requires 37 percent less water than washing dishes by hand. Don't forget to use the energy-saving cycles whenever you can. Dishwashers with air power or overnight dry settings can take as much as 10 percent off dishwashing energy costs.



• Upgrade your appliances. Get rid of that rattling old fridge or other appliance and replace it with one that has an Energy Star rating.

If you are interested in a more permanent solution to cut energy bills and would like to incorporate any of the above temperature, lighting or other control systems used to monitor your home, give us a call. Through our partnership with HAI, the leading manufacturer of Integrated Automation and Security products, we can incorporate a whole-house control system, tying together lighting, heating and ventilation, security and audio and video systems into one system with preprogrammed scenes and modes that you can activate with the press of a button.

Give us a call today and ask to speak with one our Sales Representatives for more information.