comments on review of Speakeasy → incorrect on news service

The news service is not capped at 1 gig. You can add additional capacity at any time, and the rates to do so are cheaper than other news providers, AND you can still pull down at your max down rate instead of going through a capped connection. I occasionally pull down a few gigs worth in a month, but not every single month, so I like the variable pricing because I know that I'm not subsidizing other people who pull down upwards of 10 gigs every single month. Anyone handing out unmetered news service these days is just asking to be taken advantage of by a small minority of users.

The default that you get with your monthly fee is capped at 1 GB. As soon as you hit that, you get shut off. Yes, you can buy more capacity, but I could do that anyway, AND I could choose my own news provider (most are cheaper than the Giganews - subcontracted to SE price also), AND none of them insert my static IP address into my posts like SE does.

I would prefer that SE only provided text NG's (or even none at all), if they'd give me back $4 or $5 a month. I agree with the your idea that we should not subsidize the warez monkeys and movie traders, but in a sense we already are, albeit at only 1 GB.

I think the ideal would be the ability to negotiate deals with a couple of major news feeds, such that I can forfeit my 1 GB with SE for a couple of bucks discount with Supernews/UsenetServer/Giganews-proper (avoid the SE news server that inserts my IP). I realize this will never happen, but it's ok to dream.

Anyway, the point of all this is that for people who are debating on which DSL provider to get, they should take into account the additional fees for a newsfeed if they need it (whether buying additional monthly capacity from SE, or paying for a separate news provider), and the other fine print, such as broadcasting your IP address.