founded seattle washington united states 1996 headquarters seattle washington united states key people michael apgar founder bruce a. chatterley president & ceo products isp voip parent megapath corporation website speakeasy.net speakeasy inc. was a broadband internet service provider and voice over ip carrier based in seattle washington united states . their terms of service described liberal usage policies for home users allowing subscribers to run any number of servers 1 and allowing them to resell their connectivity to others through a service called netshare . 2 they received press coverage for their support of linux and bsd derivative operating systems and were reportedly the first provider to offer a customized version of mozilla firefox to customers in january 2005 . 3 the company is now part of megapath corporation . contents 1 history 2 see also 3 references 4 external links history edit in 1994 gretchen apgar and husband mike opened a cybercafe in seattle s belltown neighborhood with mike s brother tyler . they started out with offering connectivity and email services in the area . customers at the cafe expressed a wish to have the ability to check their email from other locations than just the cafe and a series of terminal stations were set up at various bars around town . these terminals were marketed under the label rainmail . as computing power expanded and the cost of computers diminished customers began to express the further wish to access their email from home . speakeasy put together a bank of modems and offered a dial up service . as of 2008 dialup through speakeasy is still available for 19 a month . the move toward dsl took place in 1998 . in late 1999 the company expanded to a national level offering dsl services throughout the united states . the speakeasy backbone consisted of a dedicated fiber ring that circled the continental united states with major points of presence i.e. pops in seattle san francisco los angeles dallas atlanta washington d.c. new york and chicago . from the pop to the customers premises a third party vendor was contracted to provide data layer connectivity . this is known in networking as the last mile . in the case of speakeasy the data link protocol used was atm rather than pppoe or frame relay in case of t1 s. in 2001 in the face of the collapse of many isps as a possible result of the dot com bust speakeasy had marketed a program to allow for simple transfer of accounts starting with the announcement of the failure of flashcom a former dsl internet provider . that same year the cybercafe burned down in an electrical fire forcing the company to focus on the internet business . 4 in september 2003 bruce chatterley was made ceo of the company . in summer of 2004 the company announced simultaneously their entry into voip and their onelink package which allowed a dsl subscriber to maintain an adsl line without the requirement of a telco line . in spring of 2006 mike apgar stepped down as chairman and moved on to a startup company ookla that he created while at speakeasy . on march 27 2007 press releases by both companies announced the acquisition of speakeasy by best buy a fortune 100 retail chain operating in the us canada and china . best buy planned to offer speakeasy broadband and voip services to small businesses through their best buy for business unit . 5 on june 10 2010 best buy announced it was reducing its stake in speakeasy which would be merging with covad communications and megapath corporation to form a new joint company . 6 on september 1 2010 megapath covad and speakeasy announced regulatory approval and the completion of their merger . 7 the new combined company took the name megapath corporation . on december 31 2014 megapath corporation sold certain of its network assets and direct internet access customers to gc pivotal llc dba global capacity in order to raise cash to invest in its wholesale and managed services business . 8 see also edit united states v. ivanov notable cyber law case . ivanov intentionally hacked speakeasy references edit speakeasy inc. terms of service moderations of use . retrieved september 10 2006 . speakeasy inc. wifi netshare service . retrieved september 10 2006 . seattletimes.com 2005 01 26 . speakeasy to offer firefox browser . retrieved 2015 04 27 . kamb lewis 2001 05 22 . speakeasy caf fire wipes out a belltown cultural hub . seattle post intelligencer . retrieved 2006 09 10 . best buy acquires speakeasy . business wire . 2007 03 27 . retrieved 2007 03 27 . best buy steps back from speakeasy . speakeasy . 2010 06 11 . retrieved 2014 04 27 . megapath covad speakeasy merger closes . 2010 09 01 . retrieved 2010 09 01 . megapath s global capacity sale poses new managed service opportunities challenges . fiercetelecom.com . 2014 09 11 . retrieved 2015 04 27 . external links edit official homepage of megapath inc. business data for speakeasy inc. google finance yahoo finance hoover s retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title speakeasy isp & oldid 737201522 categories internet service providers of the united statesvoip companies of the united statescompanies based in seattlecompanies established in 1996 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 1 september 2016 at 09 21 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a 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