Internet Transparency Disclosure

3E8 Broadband Solutions, LLC d/b/a empower Delivered by Craighead Electric (“empower”) provides the following information regarding our broadband internet service offered to residential and small business customers. 

Network Management Practices

Empower uses various tools and industry standard techniques to manage our network and deliver fast, secure and reliable internet service to our customers. We provide our customers with full access to all legal and non-harmful content, services, and applications that the internet has to offer. However, we are committed to protecting customers from spam, phishing, and other unwanted or harmful online content and activities.

• Blocking. Empower does not engage in any practice (other than reasonable network management disclosed herein) that blocks or otherwise prevents end user access to lawful content, applications, service, or non-harmful devices. In order to protect our customers, we may use reasonable network management practices to identify spam and prevent its delivery to customer e-mail accounts, detect malicious internet traffic and prevent the distribution of viruses or other harmful code or content, and use other tools and techniques that empower deems appropriate to meet its goal of delivering the best possible internet service to all our customers.
• Throttling. Empower does not engage in any practice (other than reasonable network management disclosed herein) that degrades or impairs access to lawful internet traffic on the basis of content, application, service, user, or use of a non-harmful device.
• Affiliated Prioritization. Empower does not engage in any practice that directly or indirectly favors some traffic over other traffic, including through the use of techniques such as traffic shaping, prioritization, or resource reservation, to benefit an affiliate.
• Paid Prioritization. Empower does not engage in any practice that directly or indirectly favors some traffic over other traffic, including through use of techniques such as traffic shaping, prioritization, or resource reservation, in exchange for consideration, monetary or otherwise.
• Congestion Management. We monitor our network for utilization trends. We receive regular reports showing changes in network traffic and congestion. Empower performs routing monitoring on all network links to help ensure that traffic saturation does not occur on a regular basis. We do not set usage limits for our broadband internet service. As demand for our internet service increases, and as demand for higher bandwidth applications increases, we will monitor effects on network performance and plan upgrades as we deem necessary. Should unforeseen developments in the future make it necessary to implement an active congestion management program, we will update these disclosures as necessary. 
• Application-Specific Behavior. Empower does not use any application-specific network management practices. Empower does not block or rate-control specific protocols or protocol ports, modify protocol fields in ways not prescribed by the protocol standard, or otherwise inhibit or favor certain applications or classes of applications.
• Device Attachment Rules. Empower allows customers to attach any lawful device to our network so long as it does not impede the provision of internet service, harm the network, enable theft of service, or harm other users of the service. All empower customers will receive an optical network terminal (“ONT”) that will physically connect to the indoor fiber drop at their premise. empower customers may not connect their own ONT off the fiber drop inside their premises. Any attempt to do so will result in a complete loss of service until a empower-provided ONT is configured, deployed and tested at the customer premise and the Customer’s ONT is removed from the empower connection.
• Security. Empower is dedicated to managing our network to help ensure that our customers receive a secure online experience. These tools and practices may change from time to time to keep up with changing network technologies, and new and innovative ways our customers use the network. Empower does not provide or ensure end user security to any customer-owned device within the customer premise. Antivirus or firewall protection for a customer-owned computer, laptop or hand-held device is the sole responsibility of the customer. Empower does deploy security measures to secure our network hardware in the data center and the field against unauthorized access. This is accomplished through the use of network monitoring software and firewall filtering policies within the edge and core of our network.  Empower does not, cannot, and  will not protect your computer or other device from receiving internet service from computer hackers, malware, viruses or other harmful attacks. 
• Performance Characteristics

General Service Description.  Empower’s broadband internet access service is offered using a gigabit passive optical fiber-to-the-home network capable of up to 10 gigabit speeds with latency of <100ms over our own network facilities. Empower’s internet service enables subscribers to access all lawful content, real-time applications, and services of their choice available on the internet, including Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) and video services.

Empower’s broadband internet services are available at different upload and download speeds, at various price points, depending on the customer’s desired usage of the broadband connection. While empower’s broadband network is engineered to achieve ‘’up to” speeds for each service level offered, we cannot guarantee individualized speeds to the customer’s premise. There are variables that may affect the customer experience that are out of empower’s control. For instance, performance may be impacted by a customer’s computer, including its age, processing capability, its operating system, the number of applications running simultaneously, and the presence of any malicious software, such as malware and viruses. Speed may be slower because transport links and other locations on the internet are not yet gigabit-capable. Very few wireless routers today support gigabit connection speeds. If a large number of visitors are accessing a website or particular destination at the same time, your connection may be affected if the website or destination does not have sufficient capacity to serve all of the visitors efficiently.

Gigabit speeds are “best-effort” and not guaranteed. Speeds in excess of 900 Mbps range are most common on the gigabit tier. Similarly, latency is highly variable depending on the network path, other providers in the path, the distance from the customer to the ultimate destination on the internet, and performance of end destination servers.

Impact of Non-Broadband Internet Access Service Data Services. Empower will offer voice service via VoIP over the same last mile facilities used to provide broadband internet access service. However, because VoIP uses relatively little bandwidth, empower’s VoIP service will not adversely affect the last mile capacity available for, or the performance of, empower’s broadband internet access service.

Commercial Terms

Price. Empower offers multiple levels of internet service, all available with no monthly data cap. The pricing and other terms for our different service offerings can be found at www.empowerbroadband.com. Prices do not include applicable federal, state, or local taxes and regulatory fees. Prices and packages are subject to change.

Privacy Policies. Empower values the privacy of our internet service customers. Like most companies, we collect certain information about our customers and use it to provide our services. We collect information when you interact with us, when you use our internet service, and when you visit our website. This information is used to deliver, provide, and repair our services, and to establish and maintain customer records and billing accounts. We protect the information we have about our customers and require those we share it with to protect it as well. Empower does not sell, license, or share information that individually identifies our customers with others, without your consent, except as necessary when working with vendors and partners for business purposes and when necessary for them to do work on our behalf.  In addition, alleged infringers information will be shared based upon a court order or subpoena or other proper claim of copyright infringement. https://empowerbroadband.com/privacy-policy/.

Redress Options.  We strive to provide excellent customer service and to resolve any issues promptly. If you have any questions or complaints regarding empower’s internet service, you may call (870) 336-0999 or email us at admin@empowerbroadband.com. Empower takes all such questions and complaints seriously.