Honestly, there are days where I simply just want to switch to cable for my home Internet service. Yet I constantly resist the urge – primarily because I’ve been extremely pleased with my Speakeasy DSL service. They’ve been upping the download speeds consistently over the last several years and outages are next to nill. The only downsides I’ve witnessed until recently was the price. The 6 mbps download service (with a single static IP) is a bit pricey.. but the service was worth it. Well I’ve finally hit a bump in my DSL travels.. and I swear.. I hate VERIZON.

Things started with my move which was at the beginning of this month. I’ve had Speakeasy DSL service ever since I’ve lived in NYC and I’ve never had a problem moving my service from location to location. They’ve always been courteous and prompt with their service. Thus I expected my service move to be easy right? Well, I placed the move at the end of February and things got rolling during the first week of March. Looking good right? For those of you not familiar with DSL installs, companies like Speakeasy often have to go through several other layers to get things done – notably Covad and Verizon in my case.

Speakeasy got the ball rolling and it appeared Covad was getting things up and running just fine too. Now to be perfectly clear – my home phone # was moved to the new location which meant that my address information at the phone company would need some time to propogate through the system – ok.. I could deal with that. So we get to the loop install part and the frigging date is 3/20. What the?? It’s March 6th and you’re telling me Verizon can’t get something as simple as a Loop Install done until the 20th?? Sure.. if I had gone through Verizon DSL, I’m sure things would have taken place a BIT QUICKER.. COME ON!

Ok.. I’ll live with this.. so the 20th finally comes around and then I find out that a Verizon technician came out to my premises and couldn’t get into the complex. Umm.. I wasn’t notified that someone needed to come out to the premises. Isn’t work normally done on a shared line at the Central Office (CO)? Hmm.. I could be wrong of course.. but I swear that was the case in my previous DSL installs.

So I call Speakeasy to complain and they track things down and the Verizon tech comes back out this morning. He spends supposedly 40 minutes to bring a line out to the apartment only to find that nothing is quite working. I call him because he had called me.. and guess what ? He has no information on my home phone #. According to his order, he is setting up a new line to the apartment that would only be carrying data.

WTF?? So I call Speakeasy.. and they continue to track things down and everything appears fine on their end. My original order was to install DSL over an existing voice line (our home phone number) – otherwise known as a shared line. The Covad order also had that information.. but somehow at Verizon.. they decided that I needed a standalone line. Speakeasy asks if I call the Verizon tech back and ask him to go to the local CO and check on the cable heads and see if they were cross connected to the wrong pair. I do that.. but the tech says “I’m sorry sir but I already closed this order.. I can not do anything about this.”

HOWEVER.. he does say to me “If this was a Verizon account, I could probably go back and check on it but since this isn’t, I can’t”. WTF. Great.. I’m sure he’s following procedure and all but come on. The CO is 4000+feet from my home. Can’t you just go there and look? How hard is that?? 

So now, Speakeasy is in touch with Covad and Covad is looking into Verizon and yada yada yada.. I still have no DSL.

No DSL.. No Internet which means.. I’m still “borrowing” someone else’s wireless (poor soul). Cable is looking sweeter by the moment.. but I really like my static IP, my upload speeds, and my ping times. Most of all.. I do like Speakeasy very much. I just hate Verizon.

Sorry – this was written as one long stream of thought.

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