DSL provider Speakeasy is gearing up to unveil ADSL2+ service starting this week, Broadband Reports is the first to reveal. We spoke with Speakeasy CEO Bruce Chatterley concerning the new service, the company's evolution and their relationship with new owner Best Buy (covered below the break).

The details: 8Mbps/1Mbps for $149.95, 10Mbps/1Mbps for $179.95 and 15Mbps/1Mbps for $189.95. Installation will run you $149 (modem and install). Prequal loop distances are 10,000, 7,000, and 5,000 feet respectively. It's available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Several of our regular users alerted us that they've already been able to pre-order the service.

The new ADSL2+ tiers are aimed squarely at small business customers or power power users interested in an SLA. According to Chatterley, the company currently has no soild plans to offer ADSL2+ tiers aimed at more casual users, though he hinted that there could be some interest in offering less expensive ADSL2+ tiers (sans SLA) as part of voice/data bundles.

"If we do anything for residential, we're going to need to find a way to bundle voice in there, and potentially other things with our new parent Best Buy," says Chatterley. Other options could include bundling mobility or entertainment services in order to subsidize the lower broadband price point. If they do go this path, we should hear something within a year, says Chatterley.

Speakeasy's continued shift toward the small business market left us remembering when....

Under New Management

Speakeasy was founded as a Seattle cyber cafe in 1994 by Gretchen, Tyler, and former CEO Mike Apgar. Over the years they evolved into a small, edgy ISP with a focus on gamers and power users. The early attention to the kind of things important to gamers (proper routing, interleaved vs. Fast Path) quickly gained them instant cred around these parts as a smart, hip company.

As the industry evolved and incumbents dominated, Speakeasy was forced to focus more attention on the small business market. That shift has created some animosity among our forum regulars, who've hinted the company has changed for the worse. There's certainly been a changing of the guard in regards to support in our forums.

Chatterly, who came on board in 2003, says the company's shift was necessary as the industry's low hanging fruit was quickly picked by incumbent operators. "As we looked at the business, four five or six years ago we were able to really command a fairly good premium for our open policies, our support and network quality," he says.

For instance earlier this decade, when cable operators were trying to tell us that open hotspots equated to bandwidth theft -- Speakeasy was encouraging the practice. While a major ISP support tech might laugh off your request to have your ISP examine your funky routing so you could dominate in CounterStrike -- Speakeasy actually would. Then they'd join in and frag the hell out of you.

Even though customers value these things, Chatterly notes that these days it's just not easy to compete with incumbents who offer $14.95 DSL to the less technical. Major operators too began paying more attention to gamers, launching dedicated services such as Verizon's Game Network and Comcast's Game Invasion.

"We realized that that market was going to be tough to make a business unless you were a cable company or an ILEC," he says. The only alternative was to focus on a customer base where reliability, support and network quality are truly appreciated (and paid for): the SOHO crowd. "We really believe that the small business market has been overpriced and under-served for years by the big guys," he says.

Four years ago, when Mike Apgar was still CEO, Chatterly says 90% of the company's revenue came from residential services. "Now it's completely flipped." A survey the company conducted eight months ago indicated that the vast majority of their residential customers were teleworkers, network administrators, or home based businesses. The evolution was organic.

While the $97 million acquisition by Best Buy shocked a lot of people, Chatterly insists that the relationship makes sense because the company was already changing directions. Obviously being integrated into a $40 billion a year company offers some financial security, and Chatterley seems pleased to note the company incurred no layoffs post-merger.

The company now exists within Best Buy's entrepreneurial division, Best Buy for Business. Integration has allowed Speakeasy to offer the "business triple play": data (ADSL2+, T1, bonded T1), hosted VoIP service, and managed services products. Said services allow small businesses to essentially outsource their IT infrastructure.

But has Best Buy been annoying? Are users going to be forced to buy overpriced printers? Suffer through Geek Squad webmail ads?

"What I said when we announced the acquisition is that they were going to leave us alone," he says. "They allowed us to run our business because we know what we're doing, and pull resources from the mothership when we need them." "They're basically leaving us alone and letting us execute."

It's hard to know if it will stay that way. Many companies are left alone the first few years after an acquisition before upper level executives get itchy fingers. And while Speakeasy's evolution might have been inevitable financially, if you knew the Speakeasy that once was, it's hard not to think that something special was lost in translation.

Still, the market essentially dictated Speakeasy's path for it. If you take a look at the tombstones that scatter the broadband industry battlefield, you'll note that Speakeasy isn't among them. So what does Chatterley think about criticism that the company is "selling out"?

"We got some feedback from the same people who are participants in your forums about how 'we're selling out to the man'," says Chatterley. "But I think we've shown now six months into it that really our service is as good as it's ever been."

You can, as always, agree or disagree in the comment section below.