Review by jofallon 
UPDATED: 2.1 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 2720 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Oak Park,Cook,IL
 $111 per month (12 month contract)
 about 21 days
 Ameritech
 "Wonderful phone tech support"
 "email tech support is good, but can be slow"
 "Expensive"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I'd had the old style DSL with Earthlink from January 2000, (with the old CAP DSL modems, I think they were). There was a l;ot of confusion about this. Covad had me listed as a business class line for my Earthlink DSL, so I could not just do the ISP switch thing, as Speakeasy told me. I had to get the line reprovisioned by Ameritech first.
It still took only 3 weeks in total to get a functional connection. Of course, two days later, the whole Chicago area lost connectivity for around a day. Since then, it's been flawless; solid reliable speeds and email. The equipment works fine, and they do help you with setting up the "home network" thing. The static IP and Zyxel 645M just wouldn't work with my old Netgear RP114. An SMC Barricade 7004ABR worked fine immediately.
Costs a good bit more, but worth it!
And a more recent note: a couple of outages in the page six months. The network status page is not as useful as might be; doesn't show fixed problems, so you've no idea what may've happened. Still, far better than Earthlink; and after checking the more expensive SBC options locally, a much better deal than SBC's. Overall, I'm still well-satisfied.
Still later: sometimes email seems unavailable briefly. Speakeasy has/had problems with packet loss in some locations (including Chicago), due perhaps to the fact that they let people run servers. On the other hand, when I noticed that the price for my package seemed to have decreased, and I emailed them about it, they lowered my out-of-contract price to the new rate ($10 less a month), and increased my upload speed to 384K. This last had not been scheduled till March 2004. I had not asked for this.
All in all, a very good bet for me!
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After the BestBuy news, I'm looking at other ISP's, and realizing I could get the same connection, static IP's etc etc from several other places for $30 less. The SE DSL connection itself is reliable. Mail has had some slow periods. The only thing that made it worth while was the service; but I'm not sure it was worth 350 a year extra. After the BestBuy acquisition, it may be time for a switch.
Which I did. Now I've Lightning Bolt DSL; their support is actually better than Speakeasy's ever was, and I'm getting 4 megs instead of 3 for $79.99 instead of about $111 a month (what with fees and all). I should have moved earlier!
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