Speakeasy alternatives

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

Mark J. Dulcey wrote:
> But then where do we go?

Well, if this:

> Speakeasy's days as a consumer ISP might end the day that Covad's
> existing contracts with the telcos do.

happens, there may be few options left. But as far as the purchase of 
Speakeasy is concerned, it would seem that switching to Covad would be a 
good option for existing Speakeasy customers.

Not being a Speakeasy customer or a direct Covad customer, I can't say, 
but I'd expect the differences to be in the areas of support, except 
that the extra hand-holding provided by Speakeasy would mostly not be 
needed by readers of this list.

If you buy direct from Covad, I'm not aware of them placing any 
restrictions on use of servers, and yet their pricing is slightly less 
than Speakeasy (or at least it was the last time I checked). They're 
used to dealing with business customers.

One thing Covad likely doesn't support is encouraging their customers to 
resell their service. But who knows, even though they may not encourage 
it, they may not oppose it.

My DSL line is supplied by Covad, with support provided by a local ISP. 
The service provided by the local ISP has degraded in recent years, and 
can be particularly problematic when it comes to DSL problems, because 
the extent of their control is to open a ticket with Covad. That leaves 
me a step removed from the techs that actually know about DSL. I'm 
pondering a switch to doing business direct with Covad.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.