ryan kennedy’s blog

So I’ve been having issues with my Speakeasy DSL lately. It started on Thursday night and has been continuing since. I called them late Thursday night and they contacted Covad to run some tests. Covad confirmed a loop problem and put in a call to the telephone company. The telephone company told them they’d send someone to take care of it and that they’d have it taken care of by 10am Tuesday. Let’s ponder that more closely. Problem reported late Thursday night, should be fixed by Tuesday morning. Yeah, uh…I don’t think so.

I’ve had enough problems with DSL connectivity in my house, I can’t take anymore. Not for the $100/month I pay for it. So I did what any insane person would do, I picked up the phone and shamefully called Comcast. Yes, that Comcast. The same Comcast that had service so bad they drove me to Speakeasy in the first place. However, unlike Speakeasy, my Comcast connection never dropped when the garbage truck rolled by (I’m serious, it happens).

Now’s when the story turns sad…very sad. I went to Best Buy last night and bought myself a Morotola cable modem. I didn’t want to wait for Comcast to mail me a self-install kit and I wasn’t going to deal with another Comcast installer who’d ask to use my pristine, brand new bathroom and then dirty it up with the most disgusting dookie anybody has ever taken in this house (oh my god, what on earth did he eat?). So today I opened up the modem and hooked it up. A quick call to Comcast and I was all set…or was I?

I hooked up the Mac directly to the modem. I didn’t want my router to get in the way of any initial setup work. I pointed my browser at Yahoo! and got…the Comcast “capture portal”. Okay, no biggie, they want me to set up my comcast.net email address before I go any further. Oh, wait…this requires a download. What the hell? Okay, whatever, download their silly file and deal with it. Hmm…it seems to have downloaded a StuffIt archive. My brand new Intel Mac doesn’t have StuffIt installed. Okay, no problem…switch back to the DSL long enough to get it. Unpackage the SIT file and start the installer. Okay now, this installer is slow. Oh, that’s because it’s a PowerPC binary so I have to load Rosetta to run it. Whatever, just be patient because it’s going to install Internet Explorer. Wait…what? I have three perfectly good (i.e. not Internet Explorer) browsers already. What do I need that crap for? Enhance your calm John Spartan, just go with it. You knew there was a price to be paid with Comcast. Okay, it’s checking out the network and all to make sure we’re configured properly. Hmm…odd, it wants my password so it can change some admin settings. Whatever, it just wants to make sure my ethernet connection is set up for DHCP (right?). Okay, it’s restarting the software. Wow, evidently I didn’t get my own password right. You know, despite the fact that the MacOS dialog would have told me if I got it wrong. Okay, you know what? FUCK THIS!

So I switched over to my PC laptop. When in doubt, go to a platform they know how to screw up. I had to reboot the modem to get it to let the PC get a DHCP lease. Must be some sort of MAC address lock-in or something. I finally got the PC set up, got my account working and everything. Wonder of wonders, I’m able to hit Yahoo!. So after all that, I had to know if it was worth it. So I ran some speed tests using the Speakeasy speed test. The results were pretty astounding.

I pay about $100/month for my 6.0/768 service from Speakeasy. According to the speed test, I’m only getting 3.8/768. That’s pretty pathetic. I’m now on a plan for $50/month for my 8.0/768 service from Comcast. According to the speed test, I’m getting 7.99/713. Let me get this straight, I’m paying half as much money and getting more than twice the download rate. I can’t say I love the service Comcast gives you, but for the price you can’t beat the speeds. As long as I don’t have any of the past issues I had with them, this could work out just fine.

As for Speakeasy, I would like to say one thing. The $100/month is actually worth the service you get when you call them. They’re fantastic over the phone, I’ve never dealt with another company that hires such competent phone support. Unfortunately, I think they’re hampered by inferior technology (DSL) and the fact that they are so far removed from the hardware that they’re unable to fix many problems themselves. I think Speakeasy is a wonderful company and if they were to offer some really sweet wireless package (like WiMax, which they’re investing in) I’d be one of the first in line to check it out.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 24th, 2006 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.