Review by claudeo 
UPDATED: 3.2 years ago
member for 9.7 years, 1538 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
 Redmond,King,WA
 $68 per month (12 month contract)
 about 20 days
 Verizon (ex GTE)
CLEC party: Covad
 "Six years, still reliable connection. Fixed IPs, allows servers."
 "Billing practices have degenerated into the unethical."
 "Getting to be like just any other provider, just more expensive"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update September 2006: Speakeasy has unfortunately gone downhill in bogus fee billing practices. In the past few weeks they raised the bogus "regulatory compliance fee" significantly, at the same time as the FUSF tax was discontinued by federal action. This is in effect a hidden rate hike allowing them to keep the officially posted rates lower and the total billed amount about the same. I am one among many SE customers disappointed with this change in the company's ethics.
Update June 2005: Nothing new. Still just works. Convenience of fixed IP addresses, no nonsense about servers and high uptime are still highly rated features. Still charges bogus "regulatory compliance fee" though.
Update Oct 2004:For the same base price I've been paying for several years for 608/128 with two fixed IP addresses, the residential price sheet shows that new accounts get 1500/256. I called yesterday and was told that my account had been slated for upgrade, but delayed while their provider (Covad, I presume) was getting its act together. However, the upgrade could be done immediately. Sure enough, within a couple hours the speed tests showed the speed improvements. Now if only Speakeasy could give up on that bogus charge for the cost of doing business (the so-called "regulatory compliance fee") I would be a truly happy camper.
Update Jul 2003Well, nothing to report, but I got nagged to provide an update, so here it is. Still rock solid. My biggest problem is that I seem to have misplaced my password for rarely used features (at some point the single password got changed to one per feature, I changed one but forgot the others).Update Dec 2002.My Redmond connection (Verizon line, Covad service, Speakeasy ISP) went strange yesterday. Constant activity on my IP address even with nothing connected--almost like a DOS attack, but probably just a misconfigured system somewhere desperately trying to connect to the wrong address. Anyway, packet loss due to collisions with those incoming packets was so severe it made the connection nearly impossible to use. It took all of 10 min (after a 2 min hold) for the SE tech support person to decide not to waste more of my time and rebuild a circuit with 2 different fixed IP addresses. Could not ask for more efficient and courteous support.
Early 2002 (Two years ago below) --Hmmm. Did we reset the modem since last year? Can't say we did. Maybe we had a short power outage or two, and it got reset that way. Never noticed an outage otherwise. However, there was a glitch in billing a few days ago. Got a dunning e-mail for being overdue in payments. Strange, since on automatic payment plan. Found out that some billing system update they made screwed up the credit card expiration date, and automatic payment got denied. Instead of a courtesy notice I got a rather rude dunning letter. Oh well. Fixed in a few minutes. Hmmm. Better watch that account from now on... Other than that, so far so good.
A year later (A year ago is below) -- A year of service with Speakeasy, and the only glitch was when Covad moved some circuits and moved my friend's by mistake. It took 3 days to resolve, but 2 days of that were week-end. Since then also got the same Speakeasy service for my home in Aug. 2000, but that one in Verizon (ex GTE) land. Gave up second phone line so I had extra copper; that was before Verizon allowed Covad to line-share. Expected and got who's on first routine, Verizon-Covad line good/line bad/lost service ticket/ line fixed/line bad nonsense for a couple of weeks, then a 5-minute install and have not looked back since. Have not looked at a modem for months. Having 2 fixed IP addresses has been a godsend since I've had trouble connecting to my work VPN server through the Linksys routers that protects the home net, but no problem using the 2nd address with a cheap hub. None of that @home nonsense about VPN blocking and upload throttling. Occasional (now rare) DNS slowdowns, momentary tx/rx slowdowns during heavy gaming times, nothing that would bother me much since I'm not a gamer. Billing has worked like clockwork, very easy to check status online.
Two years ago (April 2000) -- Everything went so smooth I'm still amazed. This is actually a friend's connection in Seattle, WA. Very low tech friend, so I did the tech stuff. Ordered the least expensive Speakeasy service (home 384/128) in late January, in part based on enlightened policies compared with other providers, and in part based on DSLReports scuttlebut. There happened to be an extra line with recently discontinued service into the house, but since we'd never been able to connect on any line with a modem at more than 28K I was not optimistic. Loop install went without problem. USWest tech did not even ring the bell. One week later, Covad tech came in on time but was a little confused. I could not be there to assist my friend, but I was on standby for phone "support" and got 3 calls from the tech. One was that he thought there was already some equipment on the premises because he had been given a serial number. Nope. Second was to verify what was to be connected (my friend is *very* low tech). Third call was to tell me that there was a dial tone on the line and did I really want to use that line for DSL? Yup--go figure what USWest had in mind for that line. He rewired the phone jack to replace the RJ11 with a cat-5 RJ45, plugged in the modem, found it was working with the IP info given by Speakeasy, checked the rate, and was out of there faster than a bat out of hell. Later that afternoon I plugged a virgin Linksys Cable/DSL router/switch into the modem, configured it in 5 minutes, et voila. No formal speed checks yet, but downloaded some software updates from a couple of servers at 32kBps, so it seems ballpark. Too early to tell about reliability of line or DNS. Did not need tech support at all. Did not use mail, news, etc. Found the Speakeasy TAC system and e-mail messages very informative and useful, especially compared to what passes for information with some competitors. On the other hand, one of these days I'll have to get DSL for my house in Redmond, but that's GTE country and there is no extra copper, and based on what I read here and on the GTE sales pitches I'm not looking forward to *that* experience... Well in retrospect it wasn't that bad, see above
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