Help me choose a new ISP.

April 3, 2006 3:40 PM

Is there a smart, well-oiled ISP I could subscribe to for DSL where my needs won't get lost in the corporate shuffle?

I was with Mindspring when it was bought by Earthlink, and I have become fed up with them. I considered signing up with AT&T until I realized they were just as bad, if not worse (horrendous customer service experiences, mainly). Can I get DSL through a company who will make me feel valued as a customer? I'm in Southern California...

posted by Lillitatiana to computers & internet (16 comments total)

Speakeasy, if you can get 'em. Seriously. Best DSL ISP ever.
posted by SpecialK at 3:49 PM on April 3, 2006

If you can get Speakeasy, they are AWESOME. Best ISP in the business.
posted by Malor at 3:51 PM on April 3, 2006

LOL SpecialK, we sound like parrots. :)

In all seriousness, I had Speakeasy for a couple of years, and I only gave them up because I was forced to when I moved. They were incredibly good.
posted by Malor at 3:52 PM on April 3, 2006

Speakeasy is known for great customer service, but since they don't own the copper the phone company can stills screw you over. Nothing you can do about that, since it's a local monopoly.
posted by delmoi at 3:53 PM on April 3, 2006

Speakeasy is fine, unless the wiring in your neighborhood is crap.

When it comes down to the wires and actual service, everyone is just a number in an ILEC's database. If you expect to be treated as a valued customer, you will certainly be disappointed.
posted by b1tr0t at 4:19 PM on April 3, 2006

MM Internet provides professional grade DSL, free voice over IP, and one-on-one customer service.
posted by driveler at 4:29 PM on April 3, 2006

In addition to Speakeasy, I also hear great things about sonic.net.
posted by Nelson at 4:38 PM on April 3, 2006

Sonic.net is about as good as speakeasy. They're both great companies.
posted by aubilenon at 4:40 PM on April 3, 2006

I've been pretty happy with Speakeasy. Of course, they're just the ISP. They're wholly dependent on Covad and the ILEC to keep things working. I've found that any problems I've had could almost always be attributed to ILEC institutional incompetence or Covad dropping the ball somewhere in terms of kicking the ILEC in the butt to fix things. The cause of outages is nearly always Pacbell/SBC/whatever-they're-calling-themselves-this-year incompetence, though.

I can't remember having had a problem that was actually attributable to Speakeasy's network, equipment, operations, people, or procedures. I'm not sure it's ever happened.

Speakeasy folks have always treated me with respect and never tried to waste my time supporting me from a worthless "Now, open Control Panel..." script. Unlike every other ISP I've dealt with, when I report problems they don't attempt to blame the problem on me, instead acting on the reported problem.

They were even exceedingly helpful in reporting when one of the devices on my network was compromised. I received a notification call on my cell phone, and they immediately stopped routing my traffic (with my approval). After I'd had a chance to do some forensics and secure the compromised devices, they had me back up and running in minutes.

After hours support is excellent. The folks working the support queue at night are some of the most competent and dedicated phone support people I've encountered, in any industry, for any product, at any price point.

The only thing I disapprove of is that when I moved house, they chopped my allocation of IP addresses without notifying me. This is because the accounts for sale now come with fewer addresses than those they were selling at the time I signed up. One phone call sorted this out.
posted by majick at 5:00 PM on April 3, 2006

I've heard great things about Speakeasy as well. We've got SBC, and it's fine for a big corporation. If there was a reasonable alternative we'd switch. Don't know if this helps, but WebIntellects provide great traditional ISP hosting services - no DSL, sadly, but still excellent service.
posted by rmm at 5:00 PM on April 3, 2006

Oh, I should add that Speakeasy's NNTP service is fairly good. They don't run their own, but they provide access to Giganews with your account.

They're also the only ISP I've ever trusted enough to use as an upstream SMTP relay, after doing my own SMTP delivery for nearly a decade.

It also seems worth mentioning that Speakeasy has really been cashing in on VoIP (of which I don't partake), so they're selling that fairly aggressively. I don't know what that says about the company's future, but at the present, I'm quite happy.
posted by majick at 5:10 PM on April 3, 2006

I dropped Speakeasy two years ago; their customer service went downhill as they expanded too fast. If DSLExtreme is avaialble in your area, give them a try. Smaller companies, in my experience, are more willing to help you solve a connection problem, as opposed to larger ones who just point fingers at the telcos.
posted by aberrant at 5:25 PM on April 3, 2006

We have Speakeasy and the company is perfectly fine but as others mentioned it, you're stuck with the local phone company and SBC where we live sucks and such our internet is crawling slow and makes me want to cry. So I would check out what the limitations in your area are before I go with DSL.
posted by karen at 5:51 PM on April 3, 2006

Oh, I will also add that Sonic was really great. I actually know the owner of it, grew up in the same area. He was a little older than I was, and a lot smarter :). They've gotten very large, and if they're still as good as they were in the dialup days, lo these many years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to do better.
posted by Malor at 6:14 PM on April 3, 2006

I am a very happy Sonic.net customer.
posted by twsf at 1:42 PM on April 4, 2006

One of the things that makes Speakeasy so great is that they actually encourage you to do things that other ISPs prohibit. Earthlink, which is relatively liberal among the big ISPs, prohibits you from having a "public information server," which I assume means a web server, FTP server, or even a P2P connection that is always on. Earthlink even says you're in violation if you let anyone use your connection who is not a member of your household. This actually means that your house guests can't use your internet connection. Speakeasy's TOS, on the other hand, says this:

"Speakeasy allows customers to run servers (web, mail, etc.) over their Internet connections, use hubs, and share networks in multiple locations."

Speakeasy understands what the internet is for.
posted by tsackett at 5:11 PM on April 4, 2006