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Covad On The Mend
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Covad, who filed for bankruptcy protection last year, is slowly regaining strength. With $246 million in cash, Covad claims it has enough to carry it to profitability. They've also struck a deal with AOL to provide high-speed connectivity to AOL customers. The battle isn't over, though, as Pacific Bell continues to undercut Covad's offerings. Covad is effectively Pacific Bell's only remaining competitor for DSL service. As a happy Covad customer through Speakeasy.net, I'm pleased I won't be forced into PacBell's or AT&T's hands any time soon."
As a Covad tech will tell you, there really isn't much they can do if your line sucks. I'm assuming you're talking about a line-shared (consumer) service, not a 2nd-line service. The Telco in your area has a huge advantage here for shitty lines, as they have considerable control over what they can do to clean them up (pull new ones, replace filters/taps/et al on the line, etc.) Covad has virtually none of these options, as those that they can ask the ILEC to perform cost so much that they'll never make a profit on your service.
That's the way it is - control of the physical line gives the ILECs a big advantage here, and there simply is very little that Covad can do. That's why you see the "test it and go" policy of Covad - they have to take it as it is, and generally there's nothing they can do to improve it without spending big chunks of cash (I mean, is it worth it to spend $200 to remove the taps on a consumer line which you're only making $7 per month profit on? Not really....)
Being a customer of both Covad and Speakeasy, I have to say that I do like Covad. Speakeasy, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Maybe it's just me, but the problems I've had with them have been significant and costly.
It all started a year ago, when Covad filed for bankruptcy. At the time, I was on XO's network (having been grandfathered in, since I was a residential customer of Concentric, before they changed to XO and dropped residential offerings). I truly liked XO, but with Covad's Chap11 scare, I needed some sort of reliability, and XO couldn't give it to me. They had a fall-back plan for their business customers if Covad would kick the bucket, but we remaining residential customers were out of luck. Therefore, I began looking for a new ISP. Having heard good things about Speakeasy, it was a natural choice to switch.
This is where things started to get hairy. I went through the whole ISP switch process at Speakeasy, but somehow they neglected to complete my switch. My $90/mo 1.5mbps/386kbps line through Covad that I had with XO was switched over to Speakeasy, and they even started billing me for the extra IPs and domain hosting service I ordered. However, they didn't start billing me for what they intially told me was a $90/mo line, same as what I had with XO. (note: This is the first place I screwed up. I didn't get the 1.5/384 @ $90/mo offer in writing, since it was clearly listed on their website. This came back to haunt me later.)
After several months, I decided I didn't want to get charged a huge lump sum for back-charges, so I notified Speakeasy that they never completely provisioned my account. They were quite nice about it, and promptly finished the provisioning order. However, since August when I switched and October when I notified them about the billing problem, they replaced the 1.5/384 straight ADSL @ $90/mo offering with a 1.5/128 line-sharing RADSL @ $90/mo offering. Imagine my surprise, then, when I get my next bill and see not a $90*4 charge, but a $250*4 charge! All of a sudden, my $90/mo line had turned into a $250/mo line. Obviously this was unacceptable, and I spent the next two weeks getting passed around among the various customer service representatives at Speakeasy, all of whom promised to figure out the problem and solve it, but none of whom actually did. (note: Had I gotten the original offer in writing at the time of switch, they'd have had no choice but to give me the 1.5/384 line @ $90/mo like it was when I signed up. But I didn't. c'est la vie.)
After two weeks of bullshit and getting the run-around, I decided I would split the difference and convert up to 768 SDSL ($160/mo), if Speakeasy would reduce the $250/mo back charges to $90/mo. After another week of negotiating this deal, I finally got a useful rep, and was able to get my back charges reduced and the new line provisioned. (note: It took another several days to iron out this conversion, because first I was told my initial ADSL line, being a straight connection and not line-sharing, would be sufficient for SDSL. Then I was told it wouldn't, and I'd need to go through the whole order process again.)
In the end, I had to have Verizon and Covad both come out to run a new loop. Verizon was surprisingly prompt, arriving two days after I completed my order, and Covad, while scheduled for a week later, actually noticed that Verizon finished their work promptly and notified me that they would be out the very next day. Go Covad! At that point, I had my new loop, but I had to fight with Speakeasy for another week for them to get it provisioned and into their system, and give me back my previous IPs (easier to do that than it would be to change DNS records and wait 24 hours for them to fully propogate).
Moral of the story: When dealing with Speakeasy, get everything in writing. Document who you talk to and when, and what promises they made. If they don't keep those promises (even if it's something as trivial as them saying they'll call you in a day, and they don't), call them on it. And don't be lulled into thinking they're a good company simply because the reps act supportive. They'll lie to you through their teeth, making promises they never intend to keep.
Oh well, only a couple months left on this contract. Maybe I need to research another ISP switch. Sigh ...
I doubt Covad will fall. I work at a company who delivers content to online jukeboxes. As a company who distributes online music, we have a wide variety of connection providers. Our largest provider is Megapath, and the vast majority of those connections are marked Megapath-Covad. Of something near 700 active connections 368 are Megapath. We favor Megapath and Covad because their support is by far, above and beyond, the best. I work as a liaison between the owners of the remote jukeboxes and the ISPs who serve them, and when I work on anything other then a Megapath connection a deep fear grips my heart.
I've had broadband providers tell me that it didn't matter that my DSL connection could be put to shame by a standard 33.6. If they rolled a truck, and the connection was up, it would cost us. Oh, and they didn't have to fix it either. Still other ISPs take an approach of install it, if it works great, if not screw you there are others to sell our poor service to. Not Megapath. Its almost to the point where they will hunt you down and force you to ensure the problem is solved, or their ticket isn't closed. Its this level of organization and commitment to the customer that ensures that we remain loyal to them regardless of cost. Its just a pity that they are not 100% nation wide, otherwise we would have nothing but Megapath connections.
speakeasy pros:
2 ips for same price as covad
no pppoe
speakeasy cons:
pop located in seattle for st louis customers, and they wouldn't relocate us to a closer one (chicago, etc). latency was over 100ms to anywhere
service started going out around 3-5am for periods up to 2 hours in the summer
covad pros:
pop located in chicago for st louis customers, 40ms latency to anywhere.
no install/hardware fees (they even let me skip their 'free after rebate' zyxel router because i didn't want to hassle with it and use my speakeasy service's dsl bridge)
price just dropped to $70/month for 384/1.5!
covad cons:
uses pppoe for static ips (?!) and only offers 1 static ip for telesoho service at regular price
had to sign up for another year to get the above-mentioned price drop
all things considered, i would recommend both