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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
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 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'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.
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
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.