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 Review by roamer1 
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 2772 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
 Atlanta,Fulton,GA
 $60 per month (12 month contract)
 about 4 days
 BellSouth
CLEC party: BellSouth
 "Lightning-fast install; reliable; fast; great support and follow-up"
 "No Usenet included; at mercy of BellSouth"
 "Everything you want, nothing you don't...well, almost"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well above consensus)
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Update 1/31/2007: Aside from a 1.5-day outage a few weeks ago that was again BellSouth's doing (I saw the splice trailer in the same spot it always is in when I've had long outages, and SF support confirmed the outage was BellSouth), service has been rock-solid as usual. Billing was screwy for awhile -- I wasn't billed in October and November then got billed for three months of service in December -- but it's back to normal now.
Update 7/15/2006: I was down for three days, but after SF did some digging it turns out that that was BellSouth doing work in the neighborhood again. (After SF confirmed it was BellSouth, I spotted a BellSouth fiber splice trailer nearby, just as I did during the past long outage, and after the outage I started syncing at 3552 instead of 3008...) Service has been solid as usual otherwise.
Update 3/24/2006: Service has been somewhat flaky over the past couple of months...but the problems have always been either my DSL modem locking up -- something I've taken care of with a Unix script that resets it when it detects loss of connectivity  -- or BellSouth issues that affected BSFA and other ISPs too. The two times I called SF about long poorly-timed outages, they followed up with BST and even called me back to see that I was back up. Try getting the big ISPs to do THAT... 
Update 9/8/2005: SF discontinued included Usenet service (Giganews) with no prior notice...if you want Usenet you now have to go for a third-party service. (I went with NewsHosting...) BSFA, Comcast, Earthlink all offer Usenet as part of the package, so why not SF?  see »NNTP no longer offered as part of your contract Adjusted ratings for "services" and "value" down accordingly... Other than that, no problems whatsoever...it just works.
After having had Earthlink DSL for several years I finally got frustrated with their continuing to not offer 3.0/384 DSL to customers on BellSouth lines (only on Covad...and I'm served by DFITL at my house so can't get Covad anything) so I decided to switch. I had three options -- BellSouth, Comcast, and Speed Factory -- and SF won out, largely because of their much more reasonable AUP compared to BellSouth and Comcast.
I filled out SF's signup page, which showed 3.0/384 with a static IP for $60/mo (I was paying ELNK $65/mo for 1.5/256 with a static IP!) and faxed in a signed copy on Thursday evening and was switched over the following Monday morning, with only a small amount of expected downtime. I chose to BYOM (Bring Your Own Modem) since I already have a DSL modem, so didn't have to wait for anything to show up; SF sent me an email with the PPPoE login info and the IP I was assigned. The connection is certainly faster than Earthlink...throughput is just as it should be for a 3.0/384 connection...and it's been a lot more reliable too -- the old ELNK connection bounced up and down quite a bit, but the SF connection (even though it's PPPoE -- that's a requirement of BellSouth for ISPs that offer 3.0/384) is much more stable. SF has a great news server -- more groups and better completion than ELNK and MUCH faster to boot. I don't use SF's email as I have a dedicated server with a hosting company, but I did test it and it seemed fine.
Having LOCAL support...versus ELNK's and BellSouth's offshored support -- is certainly nice, too, as is SF's focus on providing a reliable connection with no extraneous "frills" like the big ISPs are so into doing nowadays.
All in all...there's no reason I can think of to *not* go with Speed Factory, aside from being unable to get DSL at all. 
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Speed Factory |
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Speed Factory
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