[ale] DSL SwitchOver Results?

[aaron]

Speakeasy seems to have been a decent choice for me and I have been up and 
running with them for exactly a  week now. It took about three weeks from 
order to operational, though that period included the x-mas and new year 
holidays; email status reports arrived almost daily throughout that time.
Near the end I did have to fall back to dial up service for about 4 days, 
though the fault appeared to be with Bell$outh: I was in the UPS shipping 
window for the DSL modem when B$ pulled the switch before receiving their 
final go ahead. The short of it is that the switchover and install went 
pretty smooth, but I'll be really convinced after I get my $200 equipment 
rebate.

I've also had a couple of email and voice contacts with tech support and 
the folks have been pleasant, helpful and informative. Emails received 
replies within 24hrs. The worst case hold time on the phone queue was 
about 6 minutes, though I have to add that the hold music was a much 
better mix than any I've heard elsewhere and was never interrupted by the 
customer abuse of hold time commercials or self promotions. (Their phone 
automation recordings are done by a woman with real pleasant Australian 
accent, too).

Caveates include missing the nicer web interface account controls that DTV 
had. Getting my secondary (family) email addresses set up meant sending 
an email to tech support. They were very prompt in responding and setting 
up the other 4 package accounts, but I did have to hunt through their Q&A 
web pages a bit to ascertain the correct procedure.

My B$ lines have prooven a bit flaky, so I also miss the way the DTV DSL 
gateway provided operational stats and test functions through a local IP 
address and HTML pages. The Zyxel Prestige 600 series DSL modem sent by 
Speakeasy does not seem to provide any monitoring or report access for 
the user. The Zyxel 641/645 model's I used with Earthlink DSL (way back 
when)  had a serial terminal for monitoring and firmware updates, but 
this newer unit doesn't have any ports past the slots for phone and 
ethernet connection.

I'm also not sure getting the account running would have been a "Self 
Install" if I wasn't a pseudo informed Linux geek. No hard copy setup 
instructions related to Linux came with the "Self Install Kit"; only a "3 
step" cardboard foldout for brain dead Winblows eXPloited victims plus a 
small manual with properly detailed install notes for various Winblows 
excretions as well as Mac and MacOSeX. The Speakeasy account pages do 
have some clearly noted and decent online instructions for configuring 
Linux Dial Up and DSL. Likewise, the IP and DNS info needed to set up the 
connection was only posted via web account pages but never sent in the 
status emails. The absurd but increasingly common catch 22 here is that 
the user needs online access to get the required info or help pages for 
configuring their online access. :-P

My last little whine point is that the Tech Support email addresses aren't 
published or noted, so correspondence must be done through the web 
interface. Not a huge inconvenience to cut and paste, except I did get 
hosed by an incompatibility between Opera 6.03 and their web form [wpl] 
that removed all the spaces and line feeds from my email text at send and 
made the message unreadable. Updating to Opera 6.11 seems to have fixed 
this, though I do still have a couple of quirks and nit picks with their 
user page interface and layout.



On Monday 20 January 2003 18:37, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> Well - I've been putting it off but I finally signed up for
> SpeakEasy.net DSL service. So far DirecTVDSL is still running but who
> knows when the pipe shuts down... Anyway - I've got a 72 no- obligation
> cancellation period starting now and I thought I'd ask to see what the
> non-procrastinators ended up doing and how their experiences went?
> Anyone want to convince me to go elsewhere or reassure me that I've
> "done the right thing"?
>
> 	thanx & later,
>
> 		Ben Scherrey
>
> PS: Bye DirecTV... sniff...
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

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