Speakeasy.net - Is anyone familiar with their DSL service?

[paulcs]

My wildly incompetent ISP has gone belly-up. Covad, the company that provides the lines, pushed me towards Speakeasy.net, promising the disruption would be minimized if I signed up. Of course, Speakeasy.net is based in Seattle, which got hit with a massive earthquake right around the time I signed up.

I'm seeing plenty of signs that they are having trouble swallowing Flashcom's customer base.

Does anyone here have experience with them or know anyone who does?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net (soon to be paulcs@speakeasy.net, I hope)

[FrankDC]

Check the reviews at http://www.dslreports.com . I've been searching for a decent broadband provider in the bay area for months.

[Liquid Snake]

I know that Speakeasy here in NYC has been recently overloaded as well, with all the customers being moved over. Check out dslreports, as Frank said, and read the reviews, browse the forums.

[paulcs]

Yeah, they seem to routinely overbook the NYC POP. Presumably, I'll be using the Seattle POP which hasn't had problems for a while.

Thanks guys.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Johnny Ray]

I am totally disgusted with the state of broadband service in the Bay Area. I can't get cable or DSL from anyone. Several folks I know are in the same situation. I live 5 miles from SFO; ie, not out in the middle of nowhere. Depending on who I talk to on any given day at Earthlink, my ISP, DSL may or may not be available. This has been going on since last year. No one has a clue there. And from what I've read at DSLreports, if I ever where to get DSL from Bay Area Earthlink, it would be about as good as my dial-up and less reliable.

I know of other MURCers that aren't enjoying the Bay Area broadband scene.

Sorry for the rant, but this really irks me.

John

[This message has been edited by Johnny Ray (edited 19 March 2001).]

[xortam]

I was checking DSL Reports yesterday and it seemed that people really like DSL Northwest and @Home in the South Bay. Still going through the list looking for others. Anybody in the area have experience with either of these or has good experience with another? Opinions? I don't have cable running to the house (have satellite TV) as I detest the TV service quality and monopoly attitude. I'd rather not go with cable for broadband but the reviews are quite favorable. I'm also concerned about sharing bandwidth with the neighbors and relying on the carrier to augment it. Do any of these broadband providers offer a service level agreement and at reasonable rates?

[paulcs]

I don't trust @Home, although I understand they've gotten better since AT&T bought them. They seemed to have trouble reliably getting us a TV signal and an accurate bill. They were an improvement over Viacom, however, which is damning them with faint praise. Soon after DirectTV became available here, we switched over. My roommate did it because he was unsatisfied with @Home and wanted better access to football games. I did it completely out of spite.

The whole @Home/Fremont episode was just icing on the cake.

What is it with Bay Area-based utilities? You can practically spit and hit San Bruno from the roofs of @Home's, Pac Bell's, and Covad's corporate headquarters. Why the entire Bay Area isn't properly wired is just beyond me.

On a certain level, it seems par for the course. Our local power company is now the most famous and notorious utility in the world. They make movies about our utilities' misdeeds for Pete's sake! It's gotten to the point where people in Albania know our utilities suck. It's embarrassing. This is Silicon Valley, but sometimes, given the level of service we get here, we might as well be living on the moon.

Sorry about the rant.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[paulcs]

You should try hitting their newsgroup. This is apparently the second catastrophe on the New York POP. Speakeasy has admitted as much and has been migrating people who call and complain to Atlanta and Boston. Maybe you're hitting a different server.

I was unceremoniously and unexpectantly booted from Flashcom yesterday. They did the switch without sending me new IP or Gateway information. They would eventually email me about it (four times!), but I couldn't access the Internet to retrieve my mail.

Communications was the fatal flaw in an otherwise uneventful switch. They never could tell me when the switch would happen. They couldn't tell me why Flashcom cut me off when they did. The "switch team" had a stock response of "call back in 72 hours" when it appears the switch and resulting downtime just took a couple of hours. I continued to get email imploring me to switch weeks after I directed them to make the switch.

Finally, I decided to call Tech Support. This automatically results in at least a 40 minute or longer wait, even after 2:00 AM, and either you get cut off or you actually get someone who sounds competent and surly on the phone. I like surly tech support reps. They tend to know what they're doing.

In any case, I'm back. My old email address is history. The service at 4:30 AM seems quite fast.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net