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Speakeasy Welcomes WiFi network sharing
sedawkgrep writes "Speakeasy.net has recently published a policy concerning their subscribers. They're openly welcoming the sharing of subscribers bandwidth via WiFi as long as you don't violate the existing terms of service. Speakeasy has always had a very liberal and open policy with their users. Even though I wouldn't open my network via WiFi, it's refreshing to see a company who is taking a more open approach rather than restrictive when dealing with its customers." I've been a Speakeasy customer for a while now ('tho my move from Boston to Ann Arbor meant going from 768 to 144 *sigh*) and have always been impressed with them. Great step supporting WiFi as well.
I was previously hooked up via US West. It was exciting.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Right now i am using my D-Link wireless router to access slashdot. I share my bandwidth from my Speakeasy DSL connection to all who come by. I am glad i can share my luck of living in range for dsl in area area where not many can get it.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I have PacBell DSL (now SBC) and though the stories of their ever-increasing suckage are all true, they have one redeeming feature. Although my service is supposedly 128kbps up/384 down, in fact I consistently get 1.5 mbps download speed at any time of the day or night, even for multi-gigabyte downloads. Speakeasy seems to charge quite a bit extra for > 384k download speed; if you only pay for 384, what do you usually actually get? I wouldn't mind if it's 384k some of the time and faster at night, but I really like that high speed for large transfers.
I'm moving from Cox Cable because they recently instituted monthly transfer caps, and was all set to transfer to pac bell dsl when I read about how they're sending out spyware in the mail. I'm not about to commit for a year (or pay an extra $10/month) when they could very easily make that kind of software mandatory to use their service. Speakeasy.net was my next choice.
Anyone have any experience to share about speakeasy.net, specifically their customer service as well as how badly the bells abuse their monopoly when you sign up with an alternative dsl carrier? Also, I'm probably just not looking hard enough, but I didn't see any mention on their web site of the speeds provided with each tier of service. I'm looking at either the plain vanilla or sysadmin packages. Preferred rpmfind access would be great, but unless there's a significant speed increase (preferably in the upstream direction) over normal service it's not worth the extra $10/month. Any experience/information would be great.
Speaking of increased upstream bandwidth, I saw something interesting a while ago and I though I'd ask the slashdot community about it. At the end of the interview with the WinMX developers on slyck.com, someone (it's not clear whether it's the interviewer or interviewee) adds the comment:
Also I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that as more and more people move away from the crappy 128kbit upstream broadband connections onto the next generation 600kbit+ upstream broadband connections over the next year or two, the amount of available files and other resources will flourish on ALL P2P networks beyond all our wildest dreams.
600kbit+ upstream connections that people can actually afford? Huh? Has anyone heard anything about this anywhere else?
I'd gather that since running an httpd on dialup is essentially pointless to most people; and many users out there are windows users that have default installations of IIS, which are vulnerable to virus attacks, that they just blocked it to prevent port 80 attacks on their customers.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
/me gets his box of sidewalk chalk out
:( )
(God I hope people rememebr warchalking
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I talked to a service tech for my local cable company, Mediacom, and he said that service was terrible on campus because college students sharing bandwidth was putting a big load on Mediacom's servers. How can this be? If you've got 1000 customers at 1.5mb each, it doesn't matter if each of them share bandwidth with 10 other computers, it's still a total of 1.5gb for the ISP. Bad service just means that the ISP wasn't equipped to serve out that much bandwidth in the 1st place.
Fight the power, sign up with Speakeasy ;-)
I like many of their policies, gaming servers, rpmfind server, and fileshack.
Too bad they have the all too common problem of only 128k upstream in my area (unless you want to spend too much on internet). Even Qwest in my old neighborhood had 256k on the base accouns, AT&T had 400k,and Time Warner was even faster.
But my big problem is a couple months ago they started a 1GB/month download quota for their newsgroups. You can buy more downloads, but it's more expensive than getting a newsgroups account from many newgroup providers, not to mention most places will provide full newsgroup access with your acocunt.
I've handled DSL installes for about a dozen of friends / family / businesses... from Pac Bell, the now Defunct flash com , verizon, cox (cable), at & t, and Speakeasy. The one provider I feel comfortable in always recomending is speakeasy.
I have found that the most troublesome area of DSL is getting the line delivered. But speakeasy was the easiest provider to get in touch with a human to help solve any issue that cames up. I've worked tech support for a rival company named after this planet were on. At our call center we cringed when wait times for our customers would shoot up to 40 minutes, which happened regularly. I have rarely had this experience with speakeasy.
When I have had to call and get someone on the phone they are competant and solve my issues fairly quickly.
This to me is worth the extra money that they may charge for the service. My only complaint for a while was the lack of online management tools for domain or email hosting like pac bell has. The ability to add, remove and purge email boxes without getting on the phone is a great feature.
I hope they can continue to improve their service like they have been and keep in mind that some people are willing to pay more for quality service and support.
Bandwidth costs are getting so cheap these days, its a miracle anyone's in business. "Good" IP T1s are under $400/mo without local loop, and even that's getting inexpensive. I've been quoted well under a grand per month for 3Mbps with local loop.
In fact, some of the vendors I've talked to say that they've been converting a lot of "business DSL" customers to full T1s, simply because of reliability and cost competitiveness.
Hundreds per month for 1.5/1.5 is pretty much about right for that bandwidth, and it may still technically be a bargain if it includes local loop. T1s may be a better bargain if all prices are pretty much equal, due to higher reliability.
Lets see. If I allow passerbys to use my WiFi dsl connection, and then they use it to crack into remote boxes, who are the Feds going to come after?
It's a little difficult to evaluate the problem-solving capabilities of Speakeasy, because the actual frequency of problems is pretty low.
I moved to Speakeasy and a 144K iDSL line (I know, but it's all I could get at the time) from another ISP with a 128K ISDN line who had been acquired and the new parent then acquired, with definite drops in service with each new owner. I had spent 2 months without service (trying to get a new Toshiba router to work following the demise of my Webramp unit) being bounced between the ISP and Toshiba customer service. Neither one wanted the problem solved, they just wanted me to go away. So I did.
Over the past few years with Speakeasy I have had two problems, one was a telco problem and one was a speakeasy problem. In each case, they took complete control of the problem management, made sure I had access to logs of what was going on and who was expected to do what when, so I always knew what was going on. In one case it was resolved in a matter of hours, in the other it took a couple of days.
I have NEVER had to wait more than a few minutes to talk to a customer service person -- mind you, the times I have needed to do so have been few and far between.
They recently expanded, creating a new POP in the Chicago area (I had previously been served via a POP in the Seattle area). The migration was flawless (from my perspective). They gave all their customers plenty of notice as to what was going to happen and when, then carried it off without a hitch.
I now have additional options -- primarily cable -- that would be much faster and cheaper. I continue to stick with Speakeasy due to their willingness for me to tinker with my own servers, and the fact that for most email and web browsing, faster speeds are not usually much of a benefit. While there are certainly times when they would come in handy (large downloads), I find that probably half or more web sites manage their connection to the lowest common denominator, the 56K modem connection.
In my case, when I look at all the options, having the freedoms afforded me by virtue of being a Speakeasy customer still outweighs the relatively few times I am seriously bandwidth-constrained. On those occasions, I think about getting a cheap cable service just for downloads and web surfing. I'd still run my email through Speakeasy, as they do a very good job of deflecting spam.
I've been a Speakeasy customer for about 4 years now, carrying an IDSL line. Short of two incidents, I've never had any problems with service. The first incident was when they had Redback router problems. I can't remember the head honcho's name at the moment, but he was sending out status reports daily on the repairs. Turns out they had a backplane problem in the Redback, and a bad patch bay, and the combination of the two was very difficult to debug.
So while that was frusterating, at least we as customers knew what the hell was going on. Try getting that out of Bellsouth.net (my ADSL provider). But the *real* story of how good their customer support is this:
While I'm quite happy with Speakeasy, I really wanted to get another ADSL line (I host a small group of people as a non-profit project). Speakeasy isn't yet offering ADSL in my area, but Earthlink is, and with static IPs (Bellsouth does also, but no statics. Morons.) So my IDSL goes out (about the time Bellsouth has 7 line trucks on the street), so then I think "Well, it's a good time to switch". Bellsouth came out, put in a new phone line, Earthlink provisions it, the ADSL modem shows up, it gets installed, it sort of works. At this point, since I'm now really moving to ADSL, I don't worry much about the down IDSL.
People can connect to the system. Mostly. Mail works. Mostly. Well, I can't send mail. After much discussion with Earthlink, who lied to me saying "Oh yes, there are no blocked ports", it turns out that they block outbound SMTP. Annoying. But they claim there's no problem in the routing, in spite of the fact that 50% of people can't connect, 50% of my outbound pings don't, etc. Talking to tech support, I said "I need this routing fixed, and I need port 25 unblocked." Them: "We don't see a routing problem, and we can't unblock port 25." Me: "OK, and I can't use your service. Disconnect it NOW."
So they did, and I go back to Speakeasy, calling in a trouble ticket. I explain that the time the service went out, Bellsouth was had every line box up and down a 3 mile stretch hanging wide open. "Yea, sounds like a line problem. They prolly swapped lines with you and Grandma Jones. We're on it!", says they.
Next day, someone knocks on the door. It's a technician with a modem. "Dude, gotta new modem for you. We think yours is cooked." New modem is installed, it works! Yay! Everyone is back up, mail flows, Speakeasy makes me happy again.
Then I get the bill for $300. $150 modem, $150 install fee. Yikes! I always knew a modem replacement wouldn't be free, but $300? No warning? I call Speakeasy, complement them on great service, and say "But this $300 was a little surprising. I mean, couldn't have someone mentioned it?" So they break it up over 3 payments, make it a little easier. Then the girl says "Hey, I can credit you for some service, since you had down time. How long was your service out?" "Well, it went out two weeks ago, but I was switching to Earthlink (only because you good people don't offer ADSL), so I'd say I noticed a week ago." "Gotcha, 30 days. OK, well, that's about $96 credit there. We'll do that!". Yay! $200 for a new modem. But not the end of it...
So I get the Speakeasy service survey, and because I like Speakeasy, I actually honestly fill it out. Complete with the $300 story. I get a call from the lady in charge of customer service: "Our people screwed up and didn't follow the script. You should have been told that the tech was coming, and the costs involved. We're crediting your for the modem, and the remaining $56 on the service call." I love this woman. Maybe she'll marry me, and we can figure out how to get free service for life.
There were complaints that Speakeasy had bad customer service at one time. I know they've made very agressive efforts to improve. I can only say that in my experiences to the support center has been nothing but friendly, knowledgable people, who actually WILL do something about your problem. Unlike, oh say, Bellsouth, where IF you can find out who to talk to, generally don't know squat.
Some of my folks would still like ADSL on that server. IDSL serves them well enough, and ADSL wouldn't see a dramatic improvement in uplink speeds for them anyway. Once Speakeasy offers ADSL, I'll switch. Until then, I'll pay $96 a month (yea, it's high. That was another reason to move to ADSL), but it's reliable, I've got 3 static IPs, no blocked ports, I can share on my WiFi if I choose, and I get EXCELLENT customer service.
jcwren
In general, DSL providers seem to be less worried about usage patterns than cable modem providers, probably because having separate lines from the DSL Access Multiplexer to each subscriber gives them a more reliable ability to throttle individual customers if necessary, as opposed to having a shared local loop in the case of cable modems.
Here in Tokyo I have adsl 8mb down/2up for about $50 US a month. They, and by they I mean probably 5 or 6 different companies, are now offering 12mb. They don't care if you share bandwidth or what. They are concerned with getting customers signed up and using their service. From what I hear, most people in the US aren't too happy with their high speed access. Maybe if companies worked more at customer service and less on pinching pennies they'd get more people opting for high speed access.
By the way, Speakeasy now has a promotion and is giving a free XBox, PSII, or Gamecube to new subscribers for certain plans.
To sign up for Speakeasy, click here to give me credit for the referral.
Amazing magic tricks
Unfortunately there is bad news on this front. If you try to get an ADSL over your POTS line you might end up having a line that goes out for hours switches to your bell's DSL service for days at a time and Speakeasy will give you no support with that problem. My bell said there was a problem with the Covad equipment and Speakeasy's techs said there was a problem with either the Covad or the bell equipment, and billing told me I couldn't cancel the billing on the disconnected line without paying the $300 disconnection fee. I ended up pulling out much hair by trying to talk to several billing people before going to my credit card's ombundsman. I used the helpful evidence from their tech support people, plus some collected from logs by my sysadmin at work, and e-mails from other Covad ISPs to create a report showing the problem and all my efforts at getting the problem fixed. My credit card company reversed the charges and I stopped getting hounded by their billing department after a month or so. But I had to spend way more than $300 of my time and on the report and on learning a lot more about my attorney general, consumer affairs, etc. In case I had needed to go further.
The really sad thing is that if they hadn't treated me so badly over $300 I would have given them great PR because I felt they really had tried their best to get the line working before deciding it wasn't anything they could fix technically. I didn't agree with them on not confronting the bell, which I was very willing to help them with, but I understood that if they didn't have enough customers with this problem the cost of getting it fixed with lawyers would be greater than whatever money they might make off a few years of providing DSL to those customers. I saw this as a Covad - Verizon problem that they were only secondary actors in, I felt bad for them. Then they wanted me to pay the $300 Covad was going to charge them for a lemon line and had billing people with a phone attitude that had me infuriated. At that point, I was ready to spend years and thousands of dollars disputing the bill. I shrugged when my bike was stolen, I was mildly annoyed by the cost of the dental work when I was attacked in an attempted mugging, I was actually annoyed when a family member that had volunteered to pick up a last paycheck cashed it. It is not easy to get me past annoyed to angry. Speakeasy managed it.
There are many nice DSL providers outside of the local bell and Speakeasy in most cities. I've had a good experience with a local one that supported WiFi before Speakeasy did. You would serve yourself well to find a good local ISP too.
Look, I once had a great deal with PheonixDSL for 768/768 SDSL for $38/mo. Then they went out of business. Then I had Megapath 768/768 for $50 then they decided it was no longer worth it. So then I had Telocity SDSL 768/768 for $50. Until their back-end carrier (northpoint) went out of business. Then I had DirectvDSL ADSL 1.5/256 for $50/mo until, just the other day, they went out of business. Now my new $90/mo 1.5/384 speakeasy is on order. Know what? I will GLADLY PAY MORE if it means they can actually sustain the business model and keep the lines lit up. The sad thing is, I would have paid a bit more to ANY of them if they could have put forth a sustainable business model. I say GO SPEAKEASY! Charge what it really costs, make a buck, but STAY IN BUSINESS FOR ME!