Russell's Blog

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Non-Odious DSL

Posted by Russell on June 13, 2007 at 5:50 p.m.
Well, now that Speakeasy has been acquired by Best Buy, I'm going to give up on it. I had such high hopes, but now I feel like an asshole for ever recommending them. The customer service has been rude and unhelpful (to my mother, no less!), the installation was painful, it's overpriced, and the actual service is miserably slow. And by slow, I mean like dial-up slow.

One thing I liked about dial-up service was the profusion of choices. There were dozens, and in some places, hundreds of ISPs. The ISPs offered lots of features and competitive prices. Now, the "choice" usually boils down to :

  • Your friendly local cable monopoly, or
  • Your friendly local telephone monopoly
Not unexpectedly, we pay high prices for crappy service. The monopolist providers cheerfully spy on us on behalf of quasi-legitimate entertainment cartels and clearly illegal government programs.

I want my choices back. There are a lot of smallish local DSL providers in LA, like Pacific Online and LA Bridge. Has anyone out there had any experiences (good or bad) with smaller DSL providers?

2 comments, 0 trackbacks (URL) , Tags: internet dsl
Comments
Jon Hart on June 16, 2007 at 5:17 p.m.

I haven't noticed any degradation in service since Best Buy took over. What is your distance from the CO? Depending on what service you have, your distance from the CO and the quality of the wiring from the street to your modem can have a big impact on the speed/quality of your connection. I had the 6M service here for a while but I had some serious issues with speed and connectivity and instead downgraded to the 3M and have been happy since.

You may actually want to give DSLextremem a shot. They have services and speeds comparable to speakeasy but at reduced costs.

Russell on June 16, 2007 at 6:19 p.m.

I think the CO is right at the end of the block, and the wiring in the house was recently replaced specifically for the DSL connection. Speakeasy has just sucked from the beginning, and adding Best Buy to the mix is just the last straw. I haven't observed any increase in the suck, but I hate Best Buy and I don't want to do business with them.


I will look at DSLExtreme -- their prices look pretty competitive.

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