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Summary:
SNiP is an ISP-CLEC committed to providing high quality data and telecommunication services.
SNiP was incorporated on July 25, 1995 as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Since October 1995, SNiP has been providing a full range of Internet access solutions to New Jersey, Delaware and the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
SNiP offers a broad range of telecommunications products and services to meet the needs of our residential, business, and educational customers. SNiP's services solve needs ranging from individuals wanting dial-up Internet at their homes to businesses wanting a single integrated source for all their telecommunications needs.
SNiP has experienced tremendous growth during its tenure and has been recognized by the Philadelphia Business Journal as both "The Second Largest Regional ISP in the Delaware Valley" and "The Second Fastest Growing Privately Held Company in Southern New Jersey".
Currently, SNiP maintains over 20,000 Internet customers and is adding approximately 500 more customers each month. Additionally, SNiP's churn rate is less than 2% versus a national average churn rate amongst ISPs of approximately 8%.
SNiP's region of operation extends throughout the states of New Jersey and Delaware and to the Metropolitan Philadelphia area. Our region of operation is continuously expanding and will soon include Maryland and the Washington DC area.
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Operating Philosophy:
At SNiP we are keenly aware of the customer support nature of both the Internet and telecommunications business. It is clear that the reason SNiP has risen above the pack of
more than 100 start-up ISPs in our region is largely due to our commitment to customer support. Our mission statement reflects this commitment:
SNiP is a data, telecommunications, and applications service provider committed to providing 'knock-your-socks-off' customer support to residential, business, and educational customers that we believe should not have to understand technology in order to make use of it.
Products and Services:
The goal of all SNiP products is to deliver simple, Turnkey communication solutions that allow you to concentrate on what your business does best while we do what we do best:
connect you to the world through our redundant, digital fiber-optics network for voice, data, and Internet communications.
Our Turnkey products include a broad range of Internet products: residential and business dial-up Internet service, dedicated business Internet access, and hosted applications, which include web sites, e-mail, and e-commerce. Additionally, as a CLEC, SNiP offers a complete line of voice and telephony products such as local, local toll, and long distance services, along with unique convergent services such as unified messaging and Voice-Over-IP.
Our collocation facility gives you the opportunity to locate your Internet or telephony applications at our facility, eliminating costly line charges and allowing you to take advantage of our telco quality data center.
Recent Developments:
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave private companies the ability to directly connect to the phone network of their Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC). A company thus
connected can then sell local phone service and thereby become a competing local phone company. With this Act a new class of phone company called 'Competitive Local Exchange
Carrier' (CLEC) was born with the power to challenge the market of the ILECs with new telecommunication products and services using the cutting edge of technology.
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In April of 1998 SNiP began formal efforts to become a CLEC. In November of 1998, SNiP leased 12,000 square feet of office space in Pennsauken, NJ, strategically located near the Sprint LD Point-of-Presence (POP), the Bell Atlantic Camden Tandem, and the Delaware River fiber crossings to Philadelphia. In January of 1999, all SNiP operations were relocated to this space. Nearly 5,000 square feet of this new facility is fitted out as a telecommunication central office (CO) quality data center including environmental control, static control, generator and battery backed power and FM-200 based fire suppression. About 50% of this space houses our Lucent 5ESS Phone Switch and our data center, and the remaining 50% is available for lease as high-grade collocation space for customers.
In December of 1998, SNiP leased 1,000 square feet of CO quality data center space at 401 N. Broad Street in Philadelphia, PA, commonly known as the "Carrier Hotel". This highly sought after space is critical to our CLEC initiative as an interconnection point to Bell Atlantic and other LECs in the Philadelphia Regional Local Access Transport Area (LATA), which includes Philadelphia, its suburbs and Delaware. 401 N. Broad Street is the central meeting ground in Philadelphia for more than 20 carriers including Bell Atlantic, AT&T, Sprint, PECO-Hyperion, and MCI-Worldcom.
In January 1999, SNiP signed interconnection agreements with Bell Atlantic and filed tariffs with the Public Utility Commissions (PUC) for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. PUC tariff ratification and official CLEC status was obtained in June 1999.
As a CLEC SNiP offers voice and telephone company products such as local, local toll, and long distance services. SNiP has also developed products that take advantage of our ability to converge our data and voice capabilities. These products include ISP collocation services, Remote Access Server products, and single wire voice/data delivery via Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL), and Point-to-Point (PTP) services. As the first combination ISP-CLEC company based in the Delaware Valley, SNiP is uniquely positioned to provide products and services to the convergent voice/data marketplace.
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Location and Facilities:
SNiP maintains the following facilities across the Delaware Valley:
- Pennsauken, NJ - Business Office and Central Data Center
- Weehauken, NJ - Point-of-Presence (POP)
- Ocean City, NJ - Point-of-Presence (POP)
- 401 N. Broad, Philadelphia, PA - Network Control Center (NCC)
The Pennsauken business office is composed of 7,200 square feet of office space and 4,800 square feet of data center facilities. The office space houses all business functions which include Administrative, Network, Customer, and Data Operations. A state-of-the-art call center supports Customer Care functions such as sales, service and technical support. The data center facilities house all ISP and CLEC equipment. This equipment includes all dial-in modems, server computers, routers, and the Lucent 5ESS phone switch. Approximately 50% of the data center is available for lease to collocation customers. The data center is equipped with the following features:
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- Full environmental control provided by four 10 ton Liebert System/3 units
- FM-200 fire suppression system
- Anti-static conductive flooring
- 4200 Amp-hour DC battery farm
- 800 Amp @ 280V 3-phase diesel generator
- Secure card-key access
The Weehauken and Ocean City facilities provide for interconnection to the North Jersey LATA and Atlantic Coastal New Jersey LATA.
The 401 N. Broad location is composed of 1,000 square feet of NCC facilities. This location primarily serves as a connection point for SNiP to other phone companies, Internet providers, and business customers on the PA side of the Delaware River. A portion of this space will be available for lease to collocation customers.
Quality Systems and ISO-9000:
Many of the key management personnel at SNiP have had experience implementing ISO-9000 quality systems. SNiP has committed to initiating the formal ISO-9001 registration
process. In preparation for this step, all SNiP processes have been formally documented with written procedures and work instructions. These documents have quality system
controls and conform to the ISO-9001 quality standard.
The process controls of ISO-9000 positively impact the level of customer support in the following ways:
- The written procedure framework ensures consistency in all processes
- Each employee understands their role in each process so that miscommunication is minimized
- The information flow required to fulfill a customer order is guaranteed by the process
- Each employee is accountable for the quality of the work they pass to the next step of the process
It is SNiP's belief that the quality system as outlined by ISO-9001 is a sure-fire formula for the delivery of highly consistent and reliable products and services.
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