Speedfactory Disappears into the Wind Small GA ISP shuts off service without warning A group of Internet users in Georgia is facing connection trouble as their small ISP seems to be on the verge of disappearing. Speedfactory mysteriously shut down without explanation due to what they say is a router issue but some suspect is a non-payment problem. There’s a summary of the situation in our forums where Speedfactory employees have apparently pretended to be normal users falsely posting that their service is already back up and running. Little is known about the outage but apparently the Speedfactory building has no signs of activity, the website is down and phone calls are being answered by an “all circuits busy” message. Reviews of the provider had been primarily positive up until this point. Several other providers (including Acceleration.net and AT&T) have posted to the forums saying they'd be happy to provide service to customers seeking to make a switch. Update: A NextPhase Wireless representative has written in to say that SpeedFactory is currently suffering from an outage crisis but is not going out of business. He assures users that the site will be up again this afternoon.
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 |  | | | Re: Gone Speedfactory through checks with google has been around since AT LEAST 2004. So not fly by night.
someone local would have to confirm, and reading their forum posts might help. In this case it appears to be a small isp that's grew, but could not cope with the changes to the price changes the industry is going through. | |
| | | | No, I've had their service since 2003. They provided a pretty stable connection for 5 years or so, that is until the 11th sometime. | |
| | | | Not fly by night, at least not till recently. Read the forum posts for details, but here's my story in brief:
Selected them over BellSouth in early 2003 since they were local, answered the phone on the second ring, and knew I was on IFITL when the BS FastAccess sales reps didn't have a clue (no, I DON'T need a free modem, but thanks...)
Rock-solid service for the first 3+ years, then they were sold to NextPhase Wireless out of Anaheim, CA. We all agree this was the beginning of the end. Seems like the tech staff started to jump ship thereafter.
NextPhase looks to be on very shaky financial footing as of late; guess they expanded too fast, and didn't have any more investment capital to chew through.
So, gritting my teeth, I called BSFA Friday afternoon to order service. They plan on sending a truck on Tuesday to "install" me. I found out how to set up my PPPoE with temporary credentials (thanks to a post on DSLR!), ran home at lunchtime, did the account self-setup, and am back online. IF the truck shows up tomorrow, maybe we can offer the guy a doughnut and a cup of coffee...
Dave | |
| | | | | Re: Gone Hey, Can someone tell where I can find info for account self-setup for BSFA? | |
| | | | | | Re: Gone Here's what I was directed to do:
Set PPPoE username to: attreg@att.net (note elsewhere on DSLR someone wrote attreg@att.com)
Set PPPoE password to: attreg
You should be able to connect. Then visit:
dslregistration.bellsouth.net
...and follow the hand-holding process from there. Once you've created your master account ID/password (or whatever they term it), be sure to update your PPPoE client info.
Note: this worked for me on IFITL. YMMV, I don't know nuthin' 'bout configurin' no DSL modem [he said in his best Butterfly McQueen imitation].
Dave | |
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| | | |  ptrowskiGot Helix?Premium
join:2005-03-14
Putnam, CT
kudos:4
 ·VOIPo
 ·Choice One Commu..
| Re: Gone said by ThrowDemsOut:Something finally appears: » www.speedfactory.net/We apologize for the inconvenience. We assume all responsibility. All your information is safe, nothing has been lost and your service is being been fully reestablished as we speak. They also say it is an "outage". An outage of income I would assume?
To Our Loyal Customers,
SpeedFactory and NextPhase Wireless are presently repairing the outage that may be affecting you now.
Your account with us remains safe, nothing has been compromised.
We will address each of your concerns as they are brought to our attention.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
Sincerely,
Management and Staff of Speedfactory and NextPhase Wireless
--
"A religious war is like children fighting over who has the strongest imaginary friend."
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage? »www.venganza.org | |
| | | | |  I don't think so. I just tried to get on and nothing | |
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| | | i used to work for speed factory about 8 years ago. when i was there, i'll say that everyone there took the upmost pride in keeping customers happy.
pretty much everyone there knew the systems backwards and forwards, and inside an out. many of us had a personal relationship with a lot of the customers and i didn't know of a single person there that wasn't willing to go the extra mile for anyone. even the president of the company would get down in the trenches from time to time.
alas... the fcc changed their rules about ilecs and clecs and it became hard for them to compete with bellsouth, et al when they were offering half the speed for the same price. the beginning of the end probably came when nextphase bought them out (long after i left). what business a california isp had in running a georgia-based reguinal isp, i'll never understand. soon after that, customer service began tanking and the service was unreliable at best (check the reviews).
it's sad to realize that isp's (and companies) like the speed factory *of old* are a dying breed.
rip. | |
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 ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4
1 edit |  Speedfactory's owner now also offline
»www.npwireless.com
»finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=NPHS.OB
Maybe that is why speedfactory is down. Their corporate owner went belly up?
»biz.yahoo.com/e/080306/nphs.ob10qsb_a.html
As of December 31, 2007, the Company had a cash balance of $5,370 and the Company's accumulated deficit was $19,686,740. The Company had negative working capital of $4,781,188. Total liabilities were $5,510,407 which included accounts payable of $1,125,138, accrued expenses of $128,873, deferred revenue of $166,000 and notes and advances payable of $4,001,188.
The Company anticipates its current cash reserves, plus its expected generation of cash from existing operations and new short-term borrowings, will only be sufficient to fund its anticipated operations through the 1st quarter of 2008 . Consequently, the Company will need to raise additional debt and/or equity capital in order to finance its business plan and needs for working capital. Such financing(s), if available, may increase the risk of the Company not being able to service its debt obligations, and/or cause dilution to existing equity holders. Nothing out in the news yet, but it looks like their owner may be bankrupt.
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page | |
| |  KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
·AT&T DSL Service
| Re: Speedfactory's owner now also offline Yep classic case.
Original owner sells a company to another for a tidy sum and retires. New company sucks and does an epic fail, taking it's subsidiaries and purchased companies down with it.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
|
 GuspazGuspazPremium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
kudos:15 | Stock Their stock has also tanked.
Dropped by about 30% since Friday:
»quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page···ted=NPHS
Doesn't Nasdaq de-list companies whose stock drops under $1 for more than a month? | |
| | ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4
1 edit | Re: Stock said by Guspaz:Doesn't Nasdaq de-list companies whose stock drops under $1 for more than a month? Yes. But they haven't been below a month yet. And if they are going bankrupt it won't matter - they will be delisted.
P.S.> Nextphase is NOT traded on Nasdaq. It is traded OTC.
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page | |
| | Dorian
join:2001-07-07
Vancouver, BC | Well, someone has 'high closed' the stock with a 100 share purchase putting it even with close last week. At least buy 1000 shares to not make it look so obvious! Nice stock manipulation. | |
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| | No Surprise I was a SpeedFactory customer from sometime early this decade until two months ago.
We jumped ship after 6+ months of regular, unexplained outages and over a year's worth of billing problems (which started in late 2006 with 5 months of no billing, followed by a whopping bill for all 5 months at once.) I sent a formal cancellation notice on February 26 and despite that was billed for both March and April service (2008). When I called early last week (for the third time) to get it straightened out, I asked for Drew - the person who had been running things at SF (so far as I can tell.) I was told he was no longer with the company, but that they would get it cleared up with corporate in California (read: NextPhase) ASAP.
I called later last week after not hearing back, and got the "Circuits overloaded" phone message. NextPhase and SF's sites are both gone from the net, and no one's answering the phones.
NextPhase destroyed SpeedFactory. Ever since the acquisition, it's been clear that NextPhase has been slashing support and infrastructure. The systems administrators were doing phone support, including billing. Several times late last year, someone who sounded like a janitor answered the phone, and would only take messages - not offer any help at all.
This is an incredibly sad end to what was one of the best local ISPs in the country for the first half of this decade. During times when Bellsouth could hardly keep their DSL up and running, SpeedFactory was solid as a rock, with fantastic customer service.
We switched to Atlantic Nexus two months ago and have been thrilled with the service - it's like how SF used to be. SF refugees would do well to check it out. (No, I am not working for them. I'm just very happy with the service thus far.) | |
| | | Speedfactory - signs of life Speedfactory has a pulse but is still on life support. They now have a web site up which apologizes for their outage at www.speedfactory.net. Still no access to the parent company site at www.npwireless.com, though. | |
| | GuspazGuspazPremium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
kudos:15 | Re: Speedfactory - signs of life Still not working here, I get DNS errors:
"This error indicates that the gateway could not find an authoritative DNS server for the website you are trying to access." | |
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| | A quick Traceroute... ...seems to show that the Speed Factory page with the outage message is being hosted on an Allegiance Telecom / XO Communications IP address, probably out of Philadelphia. Looks like an attempt to stem the tide of customers heading for greener pastures.
The NextPhase Wireless and Speed Factory Webmail pages are still down... | |
| tdar
join:2004-04-05
Satellite Beach, FL
2 edits | A sad day This is very sad ....Several years ago I lived in Duluth and had IFITL service from BS. As time went on, BS began to drive me nuts as they are so good at. One day I called over to SpeedFactory to see what they could offer. The phone was answered on the second ring by the Chief Network Designer. It was so good to talk to someone who understood my issues and knew what he was doing. As we were talking,unbeknown to me, he had logged onto their RADIUS server and created me a PPPoE logon. As we continued to talk, he said that he'd like to give me a 30 day logon to try them out at no charge. I said yes very fast! So while he was still on the phone with me, he provided me the logon and password and I changed my router to use them. I connected right away and he told me he could see me on the network and I was on SpeedFactory. As you might guess, I changed my account over to them the very next day. He had placed a note on my temp account that if I called in to get service, that they should use the temp password and logon he had provided so that I would have no service interruption as my account was ported.
This is how they were back in the day.....now it seems that after having been sold and destroyed that the end may be near. | |
|  kenn10
join:2003-09-10
Kennesaw, GA | The Web Site Is Back Up I'm not a Speedfactory customer but I just went to the web site and it appears to be back up. I did a number query and a few other web links and they seem to be in service.
Are you customers out there back in service on your DSL? | |
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| | Webmail still down Looks like the webpages are responding, but the access to the mail is still flaky. The email login on the speedfactory page still doesn't work yet. | |
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thumbs down from:
masterdave23 
| Re: Webmail still down Give it a little time to propagate. It will be up soon.
Thank you for your support
Speedfactory Staff | |
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| | Great, you got a web server working.. Now get me back online Considering I still cannot get my router to login, I'm calling Shenannigans. I still cannot trust a company though that doesn't even have the common sense to set up a copper line so they can at least get some form of communication up.
Speedfactory touts "Secure redundancy without worry" as a service they provide. Considering the fact that they've had a catastrophic outage for this long gives me VERY little faith in their actions.
I used to be their champion for quite sometime now, but to just totally ignore their clientbase is completely unexcusable. It's really not even close to being hard to reroute a domain name to another IP address and say "Guys, we're hosed. We're working on it. Call 555-555-5555 in order to keep up with current issues."
Atlantic Nexus has my business now and I'm actually glad. They say that even negative publicity is better than none, but in this case Speedfactory, It's your death knell. Own up to the fact that you're on life support. Give us a chance to make the switch for ourselves. Nextphase wireless, you've not only lost my business, but pretty much the business of everyone this consultant touches. | |
| | | | Re: Great, you got a web server working.. Now get me back online Domain Name: HATESVILLE.COM
Registrar: WEBAGENTUR.AT INTERNET SERVICES GMBH DBA DOMAINNAME.AT
Whois Server: whois.inname.net
Referral URL: »www.domainname.at
Name Server: NS1.FASTPARK.NET
Name Server: NS2.FASTPARK.NET
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 14-dec-2007
Creation Date: 22-may-2007
Expiration Date: 22-may-2008
So Nice Try there "speedfactory rep" | |
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