[Chicago] Broadband in Chicago

Tue May 9 06:25:23 CEST 2006

   I've been very happy with my speakeasy service and I have had quick
resolution to line trouble in the past.  I've been with them Speakeasy for
about 5 years now at two different locations with reliable service.  Even
though service is excellent, Carl does have a point about price vs
performance when compared to cable.  I still do like the finer grain control
over my services and not sharing the local loop as a LAN.   My main
recommendation would be to avoid SBC as your backend carrier if at all
possible when going DSL.  I've had great success with Speakeasy with Covad
www.covad.com as my CLEC.

Back in the day,  I did have 21stCentury cable right when RCN purchased
them.  The quality of service went down dramatically and the price went up
after the RCN acquisition and scared me off.  That was a while ago so things
probably have changed.  It seems like the bigger the company you have
service from,  the lower the quality of service (cable, dsl, etc).

Also checkout www.dslreports.com  as an additional resource for broadband
experiences and tools.

Tom M

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Shimer" <carl at clingfire.net>
To: "The Chicago Python Users Group" <chicago at python.org>
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: [Chicago] Broadband in Chicago

>
> Speakeasy support is better but IMO not worth it for a number of
> reasons.  Let's do the math: 1 year of speakeasy 6.0/768 DSL will run
> you about $1200 / year.  This is *significantly* more expensive than
> going with Comcast ( or another DSL provider) where you can get the same
> basic service for around $50 a month.  Comcast allows you to run servers
> (mail, web, https, etc) with an IP address that is almost static.   And
> that problem has been trivialized by services like everydns.net that can
> automatically update your DNS records whenever your IP changes.
>
> Despite the charming phone service from speakeasy they have ZERO control
> over line quality or anything going into the central office.  I had
> speakeasy for a year or so because I thought I needed a "professional"
> connection since I was working out of my house and needed a static IP to
> hook up my VPN box back to the home office.  I then upgraded to their
> "onelink" program that allows you to drop the phone line from SBC and go
> straight through speakeasy - reducing your monthly bill by about
> $15-$20.  Unfortunately this meant that SBC had to set up a new line
> into my house.  The quality on the new line was very poor.  SBC visited
> my house several times but could not fix the problem (or wasn't willing
> to do anything about it).  Speakeasy can't do a damn thing because they
> have no control over the local connection.  When I tried to escalate
> this issue with speakeasy they simply said that line quality is out of
> their control and that I simply was "unlucky".  Going back to my
> original phone line would mean another truck roll from SBC and more
> charges from Speakeasy.  no thanks.  Oh, and speakeasy makes you sign a
> one year contract.
>
> Speakeasy does offer better upload performance (768K) but I believe you
> can now purchase comparable upload bandwidth from Comcast (if you need
it).
>
> If you want to play the DSL roulette and pay $600 / year for great
> support then by all means go with Speakeasy :)
>
> Carl
>
>
> Atul Varma wrote:
> > I've had the same kind of experience with Speakeasy as Brian... Every
> > time I've had to call Speakeasy, the customer support reps know
> > exactly what I'm talking about and actually sound like they're happy
> > with their jobs (amazing how much of a difference that makes).
> >
> > I subscribe to their OneLink DSL plan, which gives me DSL without
> > having to get a landline from SBC, and it's worked very well for the
> > past 1.5 years that I've had it.  I get the impression that you have
> > to pay a little more than the competition when you go with Speakeasy,
> > but I think it's worth it... I had a very annoying time dealing with
> > SBC back when I lived in Hyde Park.
> >
> > - Atul
> >
> > On 5/8/06, Brian W. Fitzpatrick <fitz at red-bean.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 5/6/06, Brantley Harris <deadwisdom at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So I just moved into a new apartment in Andersonville and I am trying
> >>> to figure out what sort of broadband I want to get.  I like the idea
> >>> of bundling with cable because I want it anyway.  But, on the other
> >>> hand both Comcast and RCN leave a lot to be desired.
> >>>
> >>> Does anyone have any suggestions on the matter?
> >>>
> >> When I lived in Andersonville, I had RCN, and aside from the
> >> occasional outage. I had pretty good luck with them.
> >>
> >> I now live in Irving Park and have Speakeasy DSL and I'm *ecstatic*
> >> with them.  Their uptime is above average, and their tech support has
> >> been the best I've ever had with *any* ISP.  Even their level 1 techs
> >> actually seem to know what they're talking about, and they really seem
> >> to grok geeks.
> >>
> >> -Fitz
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> >>
> >>
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