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Review by sweet brett 
member for 7.9 years, 10 visits, last login: 6.9 years ago
lodged 7.9 years ago
 College Park,Prince Georges,MD
 $160 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 7 days Verizon- CLEC party: Covad
 "tech support" "downtime" "i'm not sold one way or the other"
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My instance of Speakeasy service is sort of special. My fraternity house uses their DSL service for 30+ people. Before I took over as our IT Chairman, everyone was complaining about slow internet, downtime, etc. which to me sounded reasonable because they had a single DSL line servicing the entire house. When I called Speakeasy to try and upgrade the line, they told me that the speed I has now was the fastest I could use because of the distance from the tower, so my only option was to get a second line and split up the house, 15 people on each line. Still, every one complains about slow internet and downtime. I personally never lived in my fraternity house so I never experienced the outages first hand until some one asked me to look at it. But, everytime I had a problem and simply resetting the router or modem didn't fix it, the speakeasy tech support was always great at helping me out. I still haven't figured out why the service goes out so often, but I think it has something to do with the fact we have 15 people using DSL service that is meant for 4. I've had people come out and look at the LAN in the house and check the phone lines, all seem to be in good working order.
Plus, i've dealt with speakeasy, verizon, and comcast tech supports before, and I've found that speakeasy's adopts to my knowledge level (which is above average) a lot easier than verizon and comcast.
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 Review by ahendy
member for 9.8 years, 2139 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
updated 7.9 years ago
- Grass Valley,Nevada,CA
- $119 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 45 days
- SBC
- CLEC party: New Edge Networks
- "Reliable Connection, Great tech support"
- "Rarely get above 100k, bad ping times"
- "Started out great, but quickly got stinky.."
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After having Direcway Satellite internet for almost a year, I got fed up with the frequent outtages and high ping times. So I decided to investigate other broadband options. To my surprise, this "IDSL" was available. It's a 144/144 connection based on ISDN. I figured it had to be better than Direcway.
So I placed my order with Speakeasy, $119/month. 2 weeks later I was told that it could not be installed because there weren't enough ISDN pairs to my location. I was dissapointed. But to my surprise, 4 days later, a Pacbell guy pulls up and says he's here to install my ISDN line. He installed the line successfully, but by that time, my order with Speakeasy had already been canceled. So I called Speakeasy to get my order started again. Their support was helpful and the order was on it's way.
2 weeks later, another Pacbell man pulls up and installs ANOTHER ISDN line. So then I had two ISDN lines. Hmm... 4 days later, ANOTHER Pacbell guy installs ANOTHER ISDN line. So at this point I have three ISDN lines. Just crazy. 2 days after that, I got a call from New Edge Networks confirming the second stage of my install. I confirmed the install date and 3 days later, the New Edge guy came.
Install was pretty easy, although he had to call Speakeasy to get them to "build the path".. Supposedly their routers weren't configured yet. Once that was done, I was up and running at a full 144/144 speed.
2 hours later I downloaded a file and was downloading at 180 kbps! I was so amazed. To this day it seems to be faster than 144/144.
Browsing is zippy, ping times are low, and it's damn reliable. A HUGE improvement over Direcway. Also, Speakeasy's TOS (Terms of Service) is great. They encourage you to run servers and download a crapload. So, I do  I run a mail server and a webserver ( »ahendy.com ). Works wonderfully.
Sure it is a bit expensive, but it is awesome service and is all I can get out here. I highly reccomend Speakeasy to eveyone.
UPDATE 6/5/05: My service has taken a turn for the worst. 80/60 if im lucky, and 150ms ping times on a good day. New Edge Networks has deemed my line unable to achieve steady 144k speeds, especially since I am routed out of Seattle, a first hop over 800 miles away.
I am canceling the service, as I found a fractional T1 from LBDSL for cheaper than Speakeasy quoted me. They say I will be routed out of Sacramento, almost 60 miles away, which is a far better first hop than Seattle. I have high hopes for this.
I am definitely going to miss Speakeasy though, overall they have been great. Their customer service is beyond anything else i've ever experienced. As I end this, I shall say, if you are close to a Speakeasy PoP, I recommend the service. Great company!
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Review by djspade
member for 8.1 years, 14 visits, last login: 7.4 years ago
lodged 7.9 years ago
- Detroit,Wayne,MI
- $87 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 13 days
- Ameritech
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Good value..."
- "Service dropouts, stuck in safe mode (not getting full speed)"
- "I'm pretty happy with em... It's the best broadband we've had."
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We ordered Home Plus OneLink ADSL 1.5/384 @ a total of $87 per month (with VoIP)... The install went by the book (Could have been neater with the phoneline). The biggest thing with us is the fact that we're stuck in safe mode and can't get the full speed.
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Review by rdflterr3
member for 8 years, 4 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
lodged 8 years ago
- New York,New York,NY
- $200 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 15 days
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Covad
- "SDSL speeds, reliable connection, very knowledgable account reps. We needed a rush on this order and they were all over it"
- "Verizon was a pain and did not communicate well."
- "Totally worth it - excellent service"
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We were running data and VoIP over a VPN connection via a Verizon DSL line. This scenario connected our New York office (only 3 people) with our California office (45 people). We constantly had complaints of poor phone quality, poor data transfer rates, etc. Verizon was not very helpful and had very long hold times in support.
Then we called SpeakEasy. The rep understood us very well and on points he wasn't sure of he took notes and emailed us back the answers. They have business packages with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that guarantee 99.99% uptime and 80% throughput at all times. They had an automated email system that notified me every night of the status of my line's installation, and it was very thorough, breaking the install process into 7 steps (Telco install, Covad install, order dates/times, billing confirmation, final order completion, etc.). All the related notes were in the account for my viewing. When we requested a rush on the order so we could cancel the Verizon DSL within their 30-day money back guarantee time period, they were able to install the SDSL line in a record 15 days (only 11 business days!) Everything worked perfect. The only ones who were a pain (showed up late, were kinda rude) was Verizon, and that's not Speakeasy's fault.
Kudos to SpeakEasy.
btw, we're running at 1.1mbps each way for just $200 a month (that's WITH an SLA). We pay $400/month for a T1 in California, so this is a really good deal! Highly recommended.
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 Review by jransden
member for 12.9 years, 1524 visits, last login: 6.4 years ago
updated 8 years ago
- Saint Louis,Saint Louis City,MO
- $139 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 10 days
- Southwestern Bell
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Great speed, Smooth install, Online order status"
- "Minor ordering glitches"
- "Smooth Speed upgrade AND VoIP Install"
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I have been a Speakeasy customer since 2000. After Southwestern Bell completed ticking me off this past winter (went without dial tone on 3 separate occasions for 3 and 4 days at a time, and stealing my SDSL loop while repairing a major cable failure), I finally decided to go VOIP. Speakeasy had just sent a mailing offering VoIP for 23.95 all-you-can-eat - so serendipity and past customer service caused me to call on a Sunday to check into their offering. Got answers to all my questions, and even got sold on upgrading my old 768/768 line to their 6.0/768 OneLink product - for less money than I had been spending.
DSL Install
Speakeasy's online order status system worked as usual - updates went flying by. Existing dedicated loop apparently had a spare pair - so that went much quicker than expected. Covad tech came out as scheduled, spent 10 minutes swapping the pair and verifying the circuit was working. No problems, and one call to Speakeasy got the line up to speed and the extra IP I had requested activated.
VoIP Install
This is where the glitches were - apparently, the service order was associated with my old 768/768 line - which was going to be turned off. Also, was given a port date which surprised ALL of us - apparently SBC is on the ball in this area. I had some concerns over getting the TA from Speakeasy in the appropriate timeframe - but after a telephone call on Monday (for a Tuesday install date) I got notification the TA was being overnighted. It arrived while I was waiting for the Covad Tech who was doing the inside wiring for the DSL install.
After the tech left, I plugged in the TA per the instructions - all the lights went blink like they were supposed to - but no dial tone. Left it alone for later that night - the instructions said it might take 15 minutes or more for dial tone to turn appear - and I was minus on minutes. Came home, still no dial tone - so I called Speakeasy on the cell. Extraordinarily cheerful and competent tech recognized problem (order associated to old DSL) - and walked me through reconfiguring TA to make it work with the new, faster circuit - and voila, the TA blinked, downloaded its configuration and we had dial tone within 10 minutes.
This could have been a horribly bad situation - but Speakeasy has apparently dedicated the right techs to the rollout of their VoIP product - since we resolved the situation on one phone call.
Service assesment (one week post install)
DSL is operating as advertised - and stability is as usual... excellent.
VoIP - Working well, voice quality is generally very good - have noticed some small glitches here and there - but nothing that qualifies as irritating - and the lack of line static that was endemic on our old SBC POTS connection is a huge plus. Still exploring the online management tools - main gripe is that they seem to be quite slow - but they haven't driven me insane yet. We'll see how well that goes.
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Review by dwjf
member for 11.4 years, 186 visits, last login: 6.1 years ago
lodged 8 years ago
- Gilbert,Maricopa,AZ
- $110 per month
- about 21 days
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Stable, consistent, as-advertized connection; apt support staff, no annual contract, down-to-earth TOS policies."
- "Qwest still involved to mess things up at install (neither Speakeasy nor Covad's fault), Broadexent modem is of poor quality"
- "Finally: solid broadband with solid support!"
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I've had Speakeasy's One-link service since about 12/04, and am quite satisfied with both the service, and the support:
While there were a few pitfalls at install time, which delayed the actual delivery date of my service (all due to the usual antics of Qwest), Speakeasy has been quite the smooth ride: bandwidth is close to that advertized, latency is good, the support staff is knowledgeable and articulate (with hold times being either low or non-existent), and most account options can be added/removed/managed online (although the 'My Speakeasy' interface for this is a bit sluggish).
I'm currently on the 1.5mbps / 768kbps One-link 'Net Advantage' business plan, however, I may upgrade this to the 3mbps / 768kbps plan for an additional $20/month (this would normally be 6mbps down(!) for about $130/month after taxes, however, 3mbps is the highest speed for which my residence qualifies).
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Review by e090
member for 8 years, 1 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago
lodged 8 years ago
- Lexington,Middlesex,MA
- $80 per month
- about 10 days
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Covad
- "excellent support, good packet service, power user features, excellent website"
- "beholden to verizon and covad of course, slightly higher pricing"
- "always recommended"
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I've been a speakeasy customer here in Lexington, MA and in Pittsburgh, PA for at least 7 years. Aside from a 1 month period a couple of years back when it dropped to 98%, they have had a 99.99% uptime percentage. Their sales and support people are 2nd to none. I cite them as example of good support accross all industries.
They are a bit more expensive than the other guys but you get what you pay for. They are also beholden to my telco (verizon) and clec (covad) which sometimes is painful but they are not quick to blame others and have a good working relationship with those companies.
They are excellent for power users. Multiple full time IPs are there for the taking and the service folk are obviously experienced which makes the calls that much faster when they can talk the lingo as opposed to just the laymen's language. I wish they could route my class-C but other than that, this power user has no complaints.
My only problems with the line are because of my distance from the central office. I'm 15300 feet from my CO and this means I'm at the hairy edge. This may be more due to the quality of verizon's pair as opposed to the real distance. In any case Speakeasy has worked with me to tune the line speed to optimize the connection.
Oh, and I'm a real user. Check out my homepage if there's any question: »256.com/gray/
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 Review by ycool
member for 11.4 years, 2267 visits, last login: 150 days ago
updated 8 years ago
- Miami,Miami-Dade,FL
- $65 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 18 days
- BellSouth
- CLEC party: Covad
- "Rock-Solid Reliable Service"
- "No Local POP, Price $$$"
- "You get what you pay for."
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I ordered the service on 8/25/04 and got it finally installed on 9/13/04.
- Dry Line ADSL 1.5Mbit down, 768kbps up for $85.95/month plus taxes making my total $96.00/month.
- You may ask, What was my reason for ordering Speakeasy? Simple, because they provided me with a BRIDGED Circuit! NO PPPoE or PPPoA bull to deal with.
- The Sales rep. answered all my questions, however he did not tell me at any time that I would be paying Taxes!
- Bellsouth installed my loop on 9/03/04 and Covad made initial appt on 9/13/04 when the service was finally installed. The Covad tech was extremely nice and installed the service pretty quick.
- The initial Covad appt was for 9/13/04 and it was cancelled on 9/11 and re-scheduled by Covad according by Speakeasy because of the Hurricanes affecting Florida at the moment. I called them up on 9/12 and stated that I needed my line installed on 9/13 and not a day later because I had already asked for the day off and the hurricane was not going to affect Miami. They escalated this to Covad, called on 9/13 to see if the installer was coming and they said NO and gave me a new install date of 9/22, at that moment someone rang the doorbell, answered the door and it was the Covad tech to install the service, what a surprice!
- When the Covad tech installed my service it was 1.5Mbits down and 384kbps up which according to Speakeasy is how they install it and then it gets Upgraded to my ordered speed.
- On 9/14/04 Covad upgraded my circuit to my ordered upload speed 768kbps. I play an online game called City of Heroes and I was getting disconnected every two minutes or so after the upgrade. Doing some troubleshooting I started noticing very high packet loss! Called Speakeasy and they acted very fast and determined that my line would not support the 768kbps upload. My modem was getting sync at 608kbps for upload and noise was too low. Speakeasy called Covad and instantly downgraded my line to 384Kbps for upload and the packet loss was gone! Thank God.
- My distance from the CO initially was 10534ft but after testing my circuit Covad found out it was 11900 ft, a little far.
- Since then my service has been reliable and only went down once for about 30 minutes while Speakeasy conducted some maintenance.
- Since my line was downgraded to 384kbps upload, My new price became $75.95/month plus taxes making my total $86.17/month.
- Billing Issues, Initially my service included one month free plus a $100 gift card. They changed this promotion he same month I ordered the service to two months free plus the $100 gift card. I opened a ticket on 10/13 to get this promotion so I would get an extra month for free since the initial installation charges were $288 which i paid. However I still had an unpaid balance of $103, my ticket was sent to the proper dept and waiting. No response so I decided to call on 10/25 and it was taking care of instantly. The unpaid balance of $103 was charged to my credit card without my consent and I was not told about it when I called and they gave me the extra free month by crediting my acct. The Charge on my check card caused me to overdraft my acct a total of four times making my acct negative $104 in overdraft charges alone.
- I started looking for a cheaper service and I found one, so I called Speakeasy and they provided me with a fax number where I could fax my Covad Switch request from one provider to another, this was on 12/14/04 and I faxed the request the same day. Since I have gotten no response I called on 12/17 and I was told that the Retention dept was the one that handled that, I faxed my request again, called to speak with retention on 12/22 which took the information down and stated that it would get done within 48 hours. My new ISP still had not gotten the switch auth, so I called again on 12/28 and asked to speak with a Supervisor which finally solved my problem and faxed the request to my new ISP.
- I decided to hang on with Speakeasy for a little while longer simply because I prefer a Bridge circuit over a pppoe which was what the new isp was going to offer me at $30/month cheaper and with a higher speed.
03/03/05 - Since I noticed that the price for my service went down from $75.95/month to $55.95/month plus taxes, I opened a ticket so they can change upcoming invoice to show the new price, got a response the same day saying the request was sent to the proper dept. On 03/08 no change yet, so I called and it was taken care of at that moment.
- I'll have to wait until next month to see what my new monthly price will be. Should be $55.95/month plus taxes, but do not know the total yet, will update when I do.
- Basically, if you need any type of issue resolved fast, you will need to call. If you open a ticket, it will stay open forever. What I love? The very Reliable service.
04/28/05 - This is just to update that my monthly price did go down from $86.17/month to $64.94/month.
- $55.95 dry-line dsl plus $8.99 in taxes making my total of $64.94/month.
- Service has been rock solid and has not gone down since my reported trouble on 9/14/04 above.
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Review by dub4u
member for 10.7 years, 170 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
lodged 8 years ago
- Boulder,Boulder,CO
- $150 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 11 days
- Ameritech
- CLEC party: Covad
- "great customer relations and easy account management"
- "none so far"
- "great ISP!"
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Moved from ISDN to DSL. I knew the distance from the C.O. would be an issue. Every other ISP wanted to sell me business class sdsl or not commit to anything more than 256K.
Speakeasy thought they could get adsl at a decent speed with their one-link line. They had all the extra the servcives I needed (some hosting, multilple IPs, dns mgmt, ect.) but didn't know the speed. So I hestantly went with what the sales person (and later my coordination guy confirmed), order the fastest 6.0Mbps and see what we get once the one-link line is in. I really liked the separate line they coordinated to be installed also. I run multiple lines and faxes already to a small home PBX and really didn't like the idea of sharing the line. With the one-link line I lucked out. Ameritech even had to run a new line to the house since all the other pairs were in use. A nice new clean 6 pairs of copper with the DSL order. For the $99 install, I feel I got a deal.
Install was no problem since the coordination person at Speakeasy stays in contact though each stage of the order and install process. I even changed a time for the covad installer via my coordinator and thought for sure that would cause weeks of delay (based on other reviews I saw), but they acutally scheduled it a day earlier when I was there.
I am running great at 1.5Mbps. My ISDN is history and my customers and employees have already seen a speed diffence and Speakeasy only is billing me for the 1.5Mbp business dsl service (not 6.0Mbps). While that $20 difference per month may not be a huge deal breaker. It's really nice that what a salesperson promised me the first time I talked to him actually happened and without me doing anything. They automatically lowered the billing once the dsl modem was installed they saw the speeds.
I am using Speakeasy's Business class NetAdvantage Plus OneLink ADSL 1.5/768. I'm very impressed with them so far and would recommend them to others.
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Review by phillyjaq1
member for 8.1 years, 1 visits, last login: 8.1 years ago
lodged 8.1 years ago
- Glen Mills,Delaware,PA
- $56 per month
- about 14 days
- CLEC party: Covad
- "No more Verizon!!! Installer was top notch. speeds are slightly better."
- "Needed a site visit to install. IP Address changed"
- "Highly recommend"
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I've recently switched to Speakeasy's OneLink service which will allow me to get rid of my phone line but keep my DSL.
I can't say enough about Speakeasy. The installer arrived on time, the install was quick and painless. He even cleaned up (how many times have you had a phone guy in the house who leaves those little pieces of cut wire on the floor.)
I left Speakeasy a while back to switch to cable for all the ovbious reasons. When I realized I had made a mistake I called Speakeasy back and they had me up and running in less than a day (good thing I saved my modem)
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