Journalist looking for thoughts on Sonic.net speed, cost

[Brendan Greeley]

Hi, I'm a staff writer for Businessweek, writing an article about Sonic.net for this week's issue. I'm intrigued that the company offers European-style pricing -- a flat rate for a single speed -- and about the relative success of a small player in a market dominated by well-capitalized incumbents.

Does anyone have something to share on the experience of using Sonic.net? Install? Service? Reliability? Value? I'd be grateful for any responses; I'll check this thread later this evening.

Thanks in advance,

Brendan

[Steve Minton]

I find sonic.net to be a much greater value than AT&T. The Fusion service costs less than AT&T's DSL, has no bandwidth cap on data, and bundles many voice services that AT&T charges for such as unlimited long distance, caller ID, call waiting, and voicemail. I imagine that the only reason anyone still has AT&T DSL is that they haven't heard of Sonic.net.

[desertflyer]

I live in San Francisco and choose Sonic.net. The offer competitive prices for the speed offered at my apartment, but more importantly they have things that their (much larger) competitors here don't have, the EFF have recognized Sonic for their privacy policies. Privacy is important to me. Also, the fact that Sonic staff seem to genuinely care about their customers - I think that stems from their support staff being based locally.

A couple of years ago I blogged about an excellent experience I had with Sonic:
http://parkerday.com/2011/i-love-sonic-net/

It all makes my Sonic bill one that I don't mind paying each month. I get really good value for my money.

[jsbarone]

sounds like a bunch of sonic shills in here talking it up! If you take the words of my peers and myself, Sonic is far from a great value and really more of a better-than-the-garbage-we-have-to-choose-from.

Support is GREAT, depending on why you're calling. That's really Sonic's strong point here. They have local, reliable support you can get to fairly easily (yay for callback) that can address many problems plaguing Average Joe Internet User. The problem with support is they treat every call like it's the only time you've had the issue. No trend tracking, sometimes they'll send out Sonic techs but only begrudgingly and often can't even do the work since it's all AT&Ts infrastructure (who sell the same service for much less, but with slightly fewer features).

Speed is no better than 'meh'. Many users complain of slow speeds, probably due more to the ridiculous age of the telecom infrastructure more than a lack of technology on Sonic's part, but still! The price I pay at what---$55 a month for speeds I was getting five years ago? Upload bandwidth is downright obscene at around 1mbps. Download, the most I get is 12 but that drops in and out constantly.

Many of us have been waiting for bated breath for the fabled gigabit deployment in sebastopol, but going on two years after Dane said here viewtopic.php?f=10&t=173&p=1035&hilit=f ... opol#p1035 it'd be finished "early next year".

So yeah, at this point Sonic has become every other ISP on the market except with markedly better support, but at a higher cost. Oh, and they rip you off to the tune of $6.50 a month for modem rental that pays for itself in 6-9mos just like Comcast does.

[virtualmike]

I'm a happy customer of Sonic.net (since 2008), and I'm not a shill. Of the options on the table right now, Sonic.net is the best value.

Installation was a piece of cake--no issues at all. While there have been some challenges with the AT&T-owned copper wire that services my home, the Sonic.net staff has always exceeded my expectations.

Sonic.net has changed over the years, in response to regulatory and market conditions, and that is inevitable. I'm not likely to move anytime soon, but if I should, the availability of Sonic.net service will be a big factor in the choice of location.

[Alex]

My parents live in Richmond and were paying AT&T almost $75/month (after taxes and fees) for 3 Mbps/512 kbps Internet service and 250 minute landline service. When AT&T jacked up its equipment rental fee earlier this year, I started looking for another provider to help my parents save money and found LMi.net. (LMi.net partners with Sonic for landline service.) After the first month or two, the Internet connection started to drop intermittently (I believe, due to rainfall) so I called LMi. LMi tried to fix everything over the phone, but after I called a couple times, LMi finally called AT&T to send a technician to the house. He checked everything from the house to the utility pole to the nearest junction box and said the problem was old wiring. Whatever the problem was, he seemed to have fixed it, and my parents have been enjoying double the bandwidth (6 Mbps/1 Mbps) and essentially unlimited domestic calling for less money ($54/month after taxes and fees) since.

[thulsa_doom]

sounds like a bunch of sonic shills in here talking it up!

That's what people say. I think asking for unvarnished feedback in a dedicated forum like this is likely to end up some some sample bias. The people who frequent this forum are more likely than average to be a promoter/supporter/cheerleader in their attitudes towards us. Our traditional means of trying to take your typical consumer of TCP/IP and turn them into a zombie horde of enthusiasts has been to try to provide a good service at a fair price and treat our customers as well as we're able.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the population of customers that call in to tech support. If you sampled purely from what people say during the first minute of a support call, I'm sure you'd come away thinking nothing around here worked at all. Nobody calls support when everything's working right.

I'm also looking forward to wider deployment of residential gigabit. I live about 11,000 feet out from the Santa Rosa 01 central office and could do with a few more mbps sometimes.

[digitalbitstream]

Mr Brendon: It is not really one speed.

But what's really special about sonic is that they publish their true speed chart:

It's all about distance, not policy, at sonic.

The bottom line:
* Calling sonic technical support results in a real human with a real brain.
* Calling AT&T results in speaking to a series of people who can't solve your problem, and can only dispatch a technician who is unable to solve your problem.
* I accept slower speeds to be with sonic. AT&T won't share U-Verse equipment with Sonic, so my neighbors on AT&T get faster speed. I'm happy accepting slower speed in order to deal with Real People.

[Guest]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... e-big-boys

here's mr greenley's article, which would seem to have already been written (or nearly so) at the time he requested feedback from the forum. Looks like even more advertising.

[Guest]

sounds like a bunch of sonic shills in here talking it up!

Well shoot. Call me a shill but I'll take Sonic's no cap, no throttle, privacy-friendly policies over higher bitrates, transfer caps, bandwidth shaping, and to-hell-with-privacy policies from AT&T or Comcast any day. The infrastructure sucks compared to other countries but that's because of the incumbents writing the damn laws putting things in their favor. Are you saying Sonic should build out like crazy trying to move an immovable object or work strategically so it can survive in the long run?

But seeing how some people get hung up on the modem rental fees can't see the forest from the trees, there's no point in arguing with these types of folks. Is Sonic perfect? No. To me, it's the best ISP I have access to and I'm talking with my wallet even though I can subscribe to a provider that can provide faster speeds. I do sympathize if you're looking forward to their fiber rollout. I am, too; but it'll probably never come by way while I'm alive.