 Review by borborpa 
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 2284 visits, last login: 5 days ago
 New Cumberland,Cumberland,PA
 $133 per month (12 month contract)
 about 42 days
 Verizon
 "Quick install, great pre-support, awesome speeds, runnign servers"
 "Cost, if you can't justify the quality"
 "They say you pay for what you get, and this is definately worth the money"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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After reviewing ISP's for a few months, I settled on Speakeasy due to all the great reviews on here. I've seen some horror stories, but definately more good ones about them. I was previously with Earthlink, and though I didn't have too many problems with them, I needed more than one IP address, and also wanted a bridged connection instead of PPPoE. I was moving down the street at the end of June, so I figured I'd just do my switchover then.
After numerous e-mails to Kat and a few phone calls with Speakeasy to verify a few things, I finally placed the line order on Monday, June 24. It took me probably 10 minutes to do the whole thing! They had me set up on the TAC so I could follow my install progress as well. That night I noticed they had an addres mistake, and was able to correct it online before they even had to contact me. On Tuesday they received confirmation the line would be live on Friday (4 days...quite impressed).
Friday rolled around and the line would train...but no connection. I called Speakeasy and the support guy said that Covad hadn't sent the confirmation over yet, and that they send it every 6 hours and it should be up soon. Well I spent Saturday moving, so the DSL wasn't a priority. Sunday I still wasn't up, so I again called Speakeasy (since there's no local dial-up for me) and was informed that Covad doesn't send the confirmation to them for 3 days, so as to test the line. The tech said he could try and bring it up...and with one click I was up and running.
The speeds are great, I'm getting 1300/202 with no tweaking yet...so I'm sure maybe I can push that up a little. Minus the high cost (which is very quickly being justified) everything is great!
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Update 5/9/03
Everything is still awesome with the SE line. I upraded to 1.5/768 last month for an extra $10, and I've very happy with the new, faster upload speeds. So far, since July of last year my line has only gone down once, which was when the POP was down for 2 hours. Otherwise it's been rock solid!!
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Update 8/27/03
Everything is still awesome with SE. I received an E-Mail yesterday letting me know they were reducing my DSL bill by $10/month, which is a welcome surprise. Not that it wasn't worth it at $99, but $89 is still nice... 
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Update 10/23/03
Still going great. There have been some problems with latency and packet loss in some of the other SE POP's, but everything's going great here! Still extremely happy with the level of service I am getting
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Update 1/15/04
SE has eliminated the PHL POP, and converted it into a NAP. This has added a couple ms on my pings, but nothing bad at all. I'm still getting great speeds (1307/647). I'll be upgrading to 3000/768 here soon when I move at the end of Febuary, so we'll see how all that goes.
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Update 7/30/04
I have moved, and the service in my new place is great. I had the 6.0/768 package installed, but after a few weeks I started to lose sync horribly. SE ran an MLT, and we found out I was 15,500' away....not 7,500' as originally thought!! That makes quite a difference. Fortunately my noise margins are clean enough that I can maintain 3.0/768 quite well.
I'm still 100% satisfied with their service. I understand DSL enough to not bitch that I'm paying for 6.0/768 while only getting 3.0. I only wish some other people did...
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Update 11/9/04
Well, I finally switched to OneLink, and I must say I love it!! Due to my distance I'm in safe mode, but my speed tests for 4000/768 are 3236/635. Not too shabby!!
The install took over a month, but OneLink normally takes longer, plus there was a busy pair with Verizon that took weeks to sort out. The biggest problem I had was when SE told me I had to be home for the Verizon install, because Verizon East is my telco. I argued this with them twice, but they insisted, so I took a vacation day and of course Verizon never showed up, because they didn't even need to come to my house. SE was very apologetic for the mis-communication to their people, and credited the $99 install fee to help compensate for that. They even tried to get Covad here on a Saturday, but they don't work on Saturdays here in PA.
Covad showed up yesterday, and the tech was great. Since I had a NID splitter installed, and CAT-5 running straight up to the third floor, he swapped it onto the dry pair, and we were up and running. It took about 20 minutes on the phone with SE to get all the IP information switched over, but they did a great job. I think all in all I was down for an hour.
I'm still very satisfied with SE, and very happy to pay the premium price for a premium service.
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Update April, 2008
Well, it was a wonderful time with Speakeasy, but when Verizon finally came out with a reasonable FIOS Business plan, I had to switch. 15/2 with 5 static IPs for $119.99 a month - I just couldn't pass that up!
SE was great while I was with them. I had rock-solid speeds and uptime, and the tech support was amazingly helpful whenever I called. In the end, it came down to the money and speed...and with ADSL+ not an option at 15,500'.
Thanks for the great ride SE!
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