Good bye Speakeasy
Bruno Wolff III
3 weeks.
The main issue is that COVAD cut back expansion after their bankruptcy
and never resumed it in lower margin areas. So I haven't been able to
directly get broadband from them in the last two locations I have lived.
(I use dialup for my house and keep a server at my Brother in Law's place
which currently has Speakeasy service, but won't shortly after I move my server
home.)
I finally decided to spend the money to get a T1 and will be getting it
through Reallinx, which at least on the surface appears to be a similar
company to Speakeasy that works with more providers.
I really liked the old Speakeasy. I have a mug and a cooler they sent me for
being a customer. Their old (and regular) newsletters were actually
interesting. The (very occasional) ones in recent years have pretty much just
been ads.
Things have changed over time and they are no longer the same company they
were, but they still let you officially do things that most other broadband
providers in the U.S. don't. Which was enough to keep me as a customer.
I miss having Chris Hunter and Kat Oak participate in newsgroup discussions
with their customers. After they moved on, nobody took over that role.
However they were not able to provide T1 service at my location, so I needed
to move on to another provider.
My plan is to continue to followup this newsgroup, if practical, after the
move. Not that there is much discussion here any more, but I think a couple
of the other old timers (e.g. Duncan) still follow the group even though
they have left as well.
Thomas Field
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> It's been about 10 years, but I will no longer be using Speakeasy in about
> 3 weeks.
>
Let's see, a half-hour of free Netscape terminal access for each month's
renewal times 120 months, subtract the RAIN terminals (awww...Sit N
Spin) and the experience of watching your ISPs flagship cafe burn down
on live tv... I don't know where that sentence was going...
Steve Jacobs
and cancel. (Also, need to finish grabbing my mail and web-site files.)
I signed up for home DSL in '99. The actual installation took *11 months*
to get right, but from the very beginning of the process SE provided me
free unlimited dial-up and exceptionally good customer service, so I
wasn't at all unhappy.
Since then, I've wanted a faster & cheaper connection, but stayed with SE
because of the uncommonly liberal TOS and the intelligent, unscripted tech
support folks.
Ultimately I concluded that I no longer use some of the frills SE provides
(dial-ups, discussion newsgroups), and will manage without my static IP
addresses. (I'll finally have to learn about Dynamic DNS.)
I don't think SE has any real interest in being a home-user ISP, given
that they have permitted themselves to become hugely uncompetitive when
considering price per speed.
With SE I was paying about $100/month (phone and 'net), for 1.5M/768
service. I also paid about $67/month for Comcast TV service.
Instead I've installed Verizon FIOS - $125/month for 20M/5M, plus phone
and TV.
I like SE's policies and respect the company (much more than VZ!), but I
simply can't afford their rates and have wanted higher upload speeds for a
long time.
-- Steve
On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:19:48 -0400, Thomas Field <cof...@speakeasy.org>
wrote:
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