Review by gariac 
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 5.8 years, 14 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 Fremont,Alameda,CA
 $52 per month
 AT&T
 "no port blocking"
 "flaky tech support; expensive"
 "I'm looking for a new provider"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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I've been a subscriber to Speakeasy DSL for more years than I can remember. Here is my history. I started with Telogy, which became DirectTV DSL. It was great. It went bust. I was on Covad for a while. Back then it was quite expensive. I changed to Speakeasy, but used my Covad hardware per Speakeasy's suggestion.
The change from Covad was pretty simple. They do their magic, I get a new set of "numbers", plug them into the router and it's done.
Now here is the trick with Speakeasy. They change plans to be competitive, but don't bother telling their subscribers of the change. For instance, I had upload speeds around 245kbps. Speakeasy updated this to 380kbps or so. The only way I found out was to see the new plan on their website. So I call tech support. They insist I am at the higher speed. I insist I'm not. After much arm twisting, Speakeasy calls Covad (who is the first provider in my DSL chain) and gets my speed up to the 380kbps (or whatever, since I don't recall the exact number.)
OK, time passes. I notice the plan I have with Speakeasy is now $10 cheaper a month. I call, I bitch, I get the new rate. I have no idea how long they were screwing me for the extra $10.
Now once in a while my DSL modem locked up. It was a Prestige from the old Covad days. Speakeasy agrees to send me a new modem if I stay with them another year. I should have dropped them then, but changing DSL providers is work, and Speakeasy kind of worked. The new modem arrives. Well, make that recycled modem. It is some sort of box from Creative. The new modem was dead on arrival. I send it back and get another one. This one worked and thus far doesn't lock up. However, it has a different problem. If there is an interruption in power, the modem locks up. This is actually worse than the prestige modem which would only lock up once a month. This new modem is total crap. The only way I can get the modem to work is to power it down for about 10 minutes, then plug it in again. Clearly I can't do any remote desktop with such a garbage modem.
Now Speakeasy doesn't totally suck. The download speed of 1.2Mbps is close to the 1.5mbps target. The upload speed reaches about 300kbps. However, the service is over-priced.
Regarding tech support, everyone speaks English. Beyond that, it is quite poor. Case in point, the DSL goes down. I do all sorts of reboots on my end. I give up and call tech support. They insist on me rebooting the modem, even though I already did ths. I had the fool on the line for the 10 minutes it takes that crappy Creative moden to reset. Of course, the reboot has no effect. I knew that would be the case since I did a reboot of everything prior to my call. They set up an appointment. What typically happens with these appointments is nobody shows up because the problem is not on my end. The usual outcome is the DSL mysteriously starts to work again. For this last so-called service call, I twist the arm of Speakeasy to find out what Covad actually did. All Covad did was pull and reseat a card in their rack. So the flaky hardware is still there.
As most people know, Speakeasy was bought out by Best Buy. The company was going down hill before the buy out, but Best Buy did nothing to improve the service.
I encourage you to log into the Speakeasy.net website and try to find the pricing plans. All you get is "starts from." This may be to prevent customers like me from finding out the prices have dropped and insisting on getting the new rate. Thus far the only other provider I looked at was DSLextreme. I can't vouch for them, but I can tell what their service costs from their website.
As soon as this modem contract is up, I'm dropping Speakeasy. I may just dropped them sooner since the competition is about $20 less a month for the same service.
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4/5/2008 follow-up
In the middle of a "session", the internet connection quits. The modem is happy (DSL light on), but websites are not found. I unplugged the modem for two minutes, but that wasn't enough due to the crappy power on reset Creative Broadxent DSL modem uses. So I leave it alone for about 10, then boot. It still doesn't work so I boot the linksys router. This is nuts. I can tolerate the booting, but the 10 minute wait for the Broadxent DSL modem is intolerable. If I could find decent test data and reviews, I'd go buy a modem.
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11/20/2008
Well, I finally got around to buying another DSL modem. Doing some research, I concluded that 2wire gear was a good as it gets. Unfortunately, they only sell to ISPs (providers), but you can get 2wire modems used, mostly from people that "upgrade" to cable (subject to debate) or just move out of town. At the time of this writing, the top of the line 2wire is the 2701HG-B, commonly used by AT&T, and goes for around $40 used.
I was having trouble with the Broadxent locking up, especially with bit torrent. That is now history. The 2wire has no issues with bit torrent. My upload speed is slightly faster. Download is about the same. There are umpteen things to tweak in a 2wire modem, so I don't want to post any hard number until I'm sure it is as good as it gets.
Ultimately, I'm still going to dump Speakeasy. Just too expensive for what you get. The nice thing about the 2wire modem is there are diagnostics that read out phone line related quality parameters. Next up is tweaking my house wiring to insure there is nothing funky on my end. I'm about 5db too high in loss to go up to the next speed level. The 2wire reads out loss up and down, signal levels, noise, and uncanceled echo. It's really worth the money. I can't understand why any ISP would just insist on a 2wire rather than waste the time of their customers with garbage like the Broadxent BritePort. You can poke around DSLreports and see similar complaints about that modem.
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