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Review by garmst 
UPDATED: 8 days ago
member for 9.2 years, 1990 visits, last login: 4 days ago
 New York,New York,NY
 $164 per month
 about 10 days
 "Consistent high speed. Runs at specified data rate. Good support."
 "None that I can think of at this point."
 "Speakeasy remains my ISP of choice. I had them at 2 apartments and all went well."
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I have the 8/1 ADSL service. 99% of the time it runs a full speed. I moved from my old apartmetn that had Speakeasy and they handled the move/install so I had no downtime after the move. New ADSL2 modem was in and running BEFORE I moved. Installation staff worked well. My special instructions went into the system and were followed. Site install technician was a fast and knowledgeable guy.
Up to this point Speakeasy is my choice above Time Warner Cable. I wish I had more upload but ADSL2 can only go so far.
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Review by noonbug
Posted: 15 days ago
member for 15 days, 1 visits, last login: 14 days ago
Fremont,Alameda,CA
$62 per month
"Fast, reliable service, reasonable prices, allows you to run your own servers, and really great customer service"
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I'm providing an after the fact review, as we just canceled our account today. We'd never have done so except that their switch from AT&T to Covad left us out of their coverage area. They personally called us a month ago to let us know that this would be happening in December, apologizing profusely.
We've been Speakeasy customers for nearly 5 years now, as best I can recall. I can count the downtime on one hand, and we've only ever needed to call their technical support twice - once for help with initial setup and once to shut it down. They were friendly, efficient and competent at both ends.
We paid for their 1.5/384 service with static IPs, but were regularly getting 3/768, if not better. We went with them initially because they were one of the few providers we could find at the time that had no problem allowing us to run our own servers AND supplied static IPs at a reasonable cost - many note that it is against their terms of service.
We found many more options this time around, but still are sad to be leaving this company.
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Review by khalberg
UPDATED: 17 days ago
member for 6.1 years, 21 visits, last login: 16 days ago
Cleveland,Cuyahoga,OH
$120 per month
"Four static IP's at 5Mb, good support"
"Would like to have a service breakout that would allow some features to be dropped to make the service a bit cheaper per month."
"Pricing and support for multiple PC's/Gaming at a reasonable cost"
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Have looked at cable and AT&T, but these are much more expensive when you get a static IP and you have to pay for each upgrade of speed for up/down.
1.5Mb/384Kb Down/Up
ZyXel 600 Modem
Support has been great!
Upgraded last week to 6Mb service after testing 3Mb with good results. I am getting over 4.5Mb with speeds usually just over 5100Kbps. Speakeasy support was able to change the service over the phone and let me try it to see how the service worked before changing.
Very satisfied with the service and support. Wish that the service was a bit less expensive, but I don't have cable and my VOIP is cheap with VIATak (highly recomended also) so I am saving there.
VOIP works much better with the higher speed. They would break up sometimes when we were downloading or streaming at the 1.5Mbps speed.
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 Review by Gomez
UPDATED: 40 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 4766 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Atlanta,Dekalb,GA
$89 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
 BellSouth
"Good speed (around 1200/600), zero problems in set up, responsive support. Static ip."
"None yet. Update: To many alternatives with better cost/Mb."
"So far so good. Update: Terminating service"
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Put in the order 1/27, after cancelling earthlink. There was one minor delay in waiting for earthlink to release the line, and get it reprovisioned. This likely could have been avoided had I waited to order, but ordering got me dialup access I would need during the transation.
The one call to support was due to an Auth error which ended up being "no more minutes" for dialup. This was handled quickly, and at no cost.
Up on 02/11 (10 business days later) with no difficulties as of yet. Now that this is working to satisfaction, I'll be upgrading to the 3.0/768 plan. Which will prompt a rereview, in which I'll have a better feel for overall reliability.
10/19/09 - Update.
Performance has been degrading over time. Since the recent rains, mostly unusable. Constant 20%, presumably as it's re-syncing. To the point now that uploading a 20 meg file to work is next to impossible.
Opened ticket, got a response that I need to call voice while having access to the modem. Understandable, I guess.
In the mean time, I explored alternatives, and decided that I could get a lot more bandwidth for much less money.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
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Review by dm2030
UPDATED: 60 days ago
member for 4.3 years, 13 visits, last login: 60 days ago
Brighton,Suffolk,MA
$85 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon
"--"
"--"
"none"
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I had initially left a bad review, but Speakeasy fixed my problems with them, so I feel it inappropriate to leave the bad review up. Carry on...
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Review by robscullion
UPDATED: 85 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 3082 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Philadelphia,Philadelphia,PA
$102 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
Verizon
"Explicit rights to run Web/Mail/FTP servers on the account,"
"Pricey"
"Great DSL Provider. Good VoIP provider. Worth the extra $"
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January 2002
I ordered the sysadmin 608/128 RADSL static IP package for $59.95/month on 11/28. Installation was accomplished via a self-install kit from Covad using line-share DSL. Got the self-install kit in the mail around 12/8 or so and was up and running using the SpeedStream 5260 at ~ 520/111 a hour or so later. I checked around and those #'s seemed to be about what was to be expected from 608/128 RADSL.
Called to have my extra IP allocated and it was taken care of on the spot. Same with our extra email box and shell account. I don't currently use the web-space of news services so I can't really comment on that. Customer service has been great every time I've contacted them. During the ordering process, the TAC system was very effective in communicating where my order was and what, if any, issues were pending.
Beyond the premium price, It's hard to find fault with Speakeasy. They've delivered on everything they promised me so far and I've never had a less than pleasant interaction with the folks running the phones and feedback system. I've also had great support from Covad directly on these forums regarding service upgrade possibilities. In the end, the explicit right to run servers was what sold me on the service. Not having to deal with PPPoE is another benefit.. I guess you have to pay a little more for good service but so far it's a trade-off I'm happy to make.
November 11th, 2005
Due to a recent apartment move, on 10/13 I called up SE to switch my service from the old place to the new place. I was pretty sure I wanted to try OneLink + VoIP but wasn't clear on some of the details. After talking to SE sales, I in fact decided to go with that configuration using the low-end TechPlus package, which is 1.5/384 with 2 static IPs. The OneLink package at that speed was $65.95/month + fees. Speakeasy Voice is $23.95/month + fees for the usual unlimited local + NA long distance plus voice-mail, call waiting etc. Since I was signing up for both at once the $100 setup for OneLink and the $40 setup for Voice were both waived. I ended up being responsible only the $16 S/H fee for the ATA, in addition to the 12 month contract on DSL + VoIP. After a brief discussion with the sales rep, we decided to skip shipping Broadxent modem since my Speedstream 5260 should be fine for the task and it would let me skip doing the $100 rebate dance.
On 10/21, the Verizon tech showed up right on schedule to setup the dry pair. He had to install a new NID since the existing wiring was pretty messy. I was pleasantly suprised at the great job & service he provided, considering the problems I've heard of with other ILEC/CLEC interactions.
On 10/26, the Covad rep showed up, also on schedule, to setup the DSL connection. The Covad tech was very professional & helpful, answering my newbie questions about VoIP wiring etc while he examined the home wiring looking for the right pair for the DSL. He even installed a new wall-jack since the old one looked pretty suspect. All in all, he did a quick thorough job and the connection has been rock solid since day 1.
On 11/2, I received my VoIP ATA (Moto VT1005s) from SE and put that in place. That commenced a few days of outages with both my DSL connection and VoIP which I was, unfortunately, to busy to properly diagnose. On Saturday, after reading the ATA manual poking around the ATA management interface and talking to support it turned out that the ATA was using the same static IP I had used on my NAT router. I have no idea how I ever got inbound IP connections at all in that 2 day period, but that was obviously the root of them problem. I switched to the other IP listed for my account and the problem was completely resolved.
Since then, both the DSL and VoIP service have performed flawlessly. Voice quality has been excellant and no service interruptions to date. The QoS thing seems to work well also, although I haven't really stressed it by talking during a BT session or anything. I also have yet to play with the extras, like accessing voice mail via IMAP etc but the basics are working well.
Aside from the confusion regarding the static IP on the ATA and the router I don't think this could have gone smoother. I was a bit suprised that the techs didn't hit on the static IP issue right off, but they were probably giving me too much credit to think I'd mess that up.  It would be good if the IPs for a given account were ID'd as public or VoIP to avoid this in the future. It's not clear from the TAC interface which IP is allocated for VoIP and which is for regular service. The fact that the TechPlus package comes with 2 static IPs just confused the issue further.
The only real gripe I had was the serial nature of the OneLink and VoIP setups. Luckily, I wasn't porting a number, so it took only a week or so to get that going. Still, it added around a week to the overall install period. If that could be done in parallel, it would certainly be a lot nicer.
Generally, the whole experience confirmed my confidence in SE as a top notch operation. Given that I had no unscheduled outages of note in my entire tenure with them, I'm expecting the same sort of experience with the new naked DSL and VoIP service.
November 13th, 2005
I had a chance to check out the quality if the VoIP connection while torrenting a few files. It's not flawless, but the quality was tolerable. It sort of "burbled" a bit as if there were small micro-dropouts, but never got to the point where is seriously affected the conversation. So I'd give the QoS on Speakeasy Voice an A-. Not perfect, but definitely good enough.
November 22nd, 2005
Just wanted to sound a positive note for the SE billing dept. During the course of troubleshooting the VoIP problem, the tech shipped out a new DSL modem to me freeof charge. I was a little dismayed to see a $99 self-install kit charge show up on my bill today. I called SE ready for a tussle and was pleasently surprised when the tech simply verified my story via the trouble ticket system and issued a $99 credit. I had heard that the billing dept did not get the same high marks as SE tech support, but so far they've handled the few billing issues I've had quickly and to my complete satisfaction.
Reading back my whole log, I probably come off like a SE shill or a fan-boi. All I can say is that, having dealt with Comcast, Verizon & AOL, getting this kind of service from a company makes me want to let people know. I'm generally a cheapskate (one of the reasons I switched to VoIP) but in this case I've found SE really does provide superior value for the extra money.
December 4, 2005
Just a VoIP update as the data service has been problem free. VoIP quality is decent, but some calls do sound a bit garbled. It hasn't been so bad that it actually interfereed with the conversation, but there are occasional micro-drop outs and echoes. Also, I confirmed something observed by another user: SE VoIP caller ID is phone # only, not # + name. Kind of weird and annoying if you're used to standard POTS caller ID, which gives both.
Neither problem is enough to make me want to switch away from SE Voice, but I'd say it's not quite up to the quality of POTS yet. So far I've never failed to have a call placed and no one has mentioned problems dialing in, so it's still looking like a reliable service. Just not *quite* POTS in terms of sound quality.
December 27, 2005
I saw in the SE forum that Caller ID + Name is back. Just wanted to note it here to be fair to Speakeasy. I was also recently informed that I've got free international calling to 22 countries. I doubt I'll ever use it, but it's a feature of the service so it seemed worth mentioning.
March 18, 2006
Voice quality on the VoIP line has settled out at decent to good. Most of the time the quality is somewhere between that of a cell phone and a POTS line. I have had several instances in the last month of calls in which one party could suddenly no longer hear the other. I'm pretty sure most of them involved calls to cell phones, but I'm not sure if that's significant. Otherwise, I really can't complain. It's still pricey overall, but no outages for either the DSL or the VoIP.
June 09, 2006
I discovered a month or so back that most of my quality problems with my SE Voice service actually stemmed from a combination of 2.4ghz cordless phones and a pair of WRT54G wireless routers. I was fooled as we had a similar combination at our old place before my Oct move and didn't notice any problems. That was before I added a second WRT and setup a WDS "bridge" to my front room just after our move. Once we purchased 5.8ghz units, the voice quality improved dramatically. Still just a shade below POTS but no longer as burbly as I had previously reported
June 09, 2009
Having retired my home server sometime last year and moved over to Comcast HSI last month, I finally made the difficult phone call to disconnect my SE service. I still give SE very high marks for reliability and professionalism, but $70/month for 1.5mbit DSL is just too much when I'm no longer taking advantage of the perks. I wish I could keep the VoIP service, but it only rides on their own network so it will have to go as well. I've left it active for the next few days as I pursue options for porting the number (which was an option I didn't know I had), but as of now I'm effectively an ex-Speakeasy customer.
As always, the Speakeasy rep was professional and helpful, even pointing out the possibility of porting our number to another provider. I got more than 7 good and trouble-free years from Speakeasy and would recommend them in a heartbeat to anyone who needs a residential broadband service with static IP and the right to run servers. It comes at a fairly steep price, but if that's what you need, this is the company you want to go with.
Sept 05, 2009
Last entry. Had a bit of a mixup with the SE billing dept. I thought I was free-and-clear following the port of my VoIP number to Comcast, but I received a letter this week telling me I owed $10.19. Called the SE #, talked to the customer service rep and he waived the remaining balance and confirmed that my account was closed, bringing my experience with SE to a pleasant conclusion.
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Review by charden420
Posted: 95 days ago
member for 241 days, 19 visits, last login: 62 days ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 Business customer
$2000 per month (12 month contract)
AT&T
"There are a couple honest reps."
"Promised speed vs. delivered speed, billing accuracy, correction of billing mistakes"
"Don't bother unless you have tons of time to monitor & call to battle for what you were promised"
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We picked Speakeasy as a provider and became a Partner even though they weren't the least expensive for the benefit of a Dedicated Account Manager, and because at the time they had an excellent customer service rating, all of which quickly faded into oblivion. I'd like to begin by stating that we signed up 4 of our satellite locations for service. It took over 1 year and many calls and emails to receive our commissions for these other locations. The service disappeared into a black hole shortly after upgrading from a single T1 to a bonded T1, requesting an additional ADSL for our original service location (Location 1), and adding 2 additional service locations (Locations 2 and 3). Location 1: We never received the promised rebate for a very over priced Cisco router; in addition to that we were overbilled for the service ordered. To add insult to injury the 2nd ADSL ordered at the same time ended up being installed over the existing circuit leaving us with 1 ADSL line and 2 monthly line items, and as if that weren’t enough we never achieved the speed on the ADSL that was promised and were in turn severely overbilled for it. When we contacted them to have this rectified we were at first told that we didn't call soon enough to have the item removed, and it took 6 weeks of battling front line Cust. Svc up the food chain and then having to play semantics with upper management until they could no longer deny the proof provided (and declined to send a Tech out to verify and split the cost) and finally credited our account, and adjusted the billing to reflect what we were promised. Location 2: was promised 6.0/768, it took over 45 days to have this service installed. Upon install they were unable to sync the line, so the service was turned down to 3.0/768, billing was not adjusted accordingly, and a loop test was not preformed until 8mos later and only after persistent calls to tech support and finally getting a decent tech who actually followed up. Once the loop test was performed it was determined that the location was over 13k ft. from the CO and the highest speed that could be achieved was 1.5/384, despite our experience w/Location 1, credit was offered up immediately, our best guess as to why is because this was a line running to a residence/home office. Location 3: fantastic to start with, installed in record time, and speed/up time was as promised.... Until the phone number for the location was ported away from Verizon and 6mos later Verizon reclaimed their line, upon reinstall there have been numerous erroneous charges that effectively more than doubled the cost of service and they continued to bill for the initial service/circuit that Verizon removed, we're still fighting to have these charges explained and removed, and will update once the issues have been resolved. All 3 locations' services have been discontinued and new providers have been put into place. I have fought with my fair share of "utility and phone companies". We are not alone in our suffering of Speakeasy's Illegal Billing Practices, and if you've experienced similar we urge you to contact the FTC as we did.
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Review by ChrisTheCat
UPDATED: 105 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 34 visits, last login: 102 days ago
Portland,Multnomah,OR
$112 per month (13 month contract)
Qwest
"Fast, reliable"
"Expensive"
"Still wish there was fiber optic in my neighborhood"
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I'm about to leave Speakeasy so I thought I should go ahead and write the review. I've lived in a rental in Portland for a year. There have only been a couple of minor outages. My speedtest.net tests run 25ms ping, 5.5mb download. Very nice, but very expensive. So when I move to the house I bought, I'm switching to DSL from the provider that was just hooked up. 75s ping, 2.5mb download, but 1/3 the cost.
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Review by jonnyblaze
Posted: 117 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 1905 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Cupertino,Santa Clara,CA
$56 per month
"Overall awesome service! I have had them since I've moved back to CA (in 2001)."
"Can't really think of any..."
"Their support is tops in my book!"
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They have been a very even-keel company since I've had them. I have moved 4 times since I came back out here and no problems on each move.
My Parents also have them with no problems either.
Highly recommend them!
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Review by spectrum1190
UPDATED: 143 days ago
member for 4.2 years, 11 visits, last login: 41 days ago
Glen Mills,Delaware,PA
$71 per month
about 14 days
Verizon
"reliability, price, service"
"fios speed not available"
"great choice for reliability and value"
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$65.95 per month
Tech Plus OneLink ADSL 1.5/384 Pro-Install (C)
*Tax Reimbursement (g): Special Tax - State
*Regulatory Compliance Fee
*not included in monthly fee
Had Speakeasy DSL for two years before moving from an apartment to a house. House was in new development and service through speakeasy (covad) was not available when moving in. Had service through Comcast CABLE for four years, but would have problems with connectivity 1-2x per month. As of 2005 found that Speakeasy was available and have had service with them since.
Had considered DSL though Verizon (2001 and 2005), however, they said that we were too far away from CO for service (DISTANCE FROM C.O. 14,724 ft).
Now considering FIOS for greater speed, but will regret leaving speakeasy. They were efficient, friendly, and knowledgeable.
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