Change in pricing for resold AT&T fiber/Fusion IPBB?

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
41 posts Page 3 of 5
by klui » Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:09 am
I don't mind paying what we do for FX1 (50 Mbps, over provisioned to 60 Mbps). I will probably wait until Sonic is able to build out to where I live. I have stuck with them for a decade along with my folks back when they had 1.5 Mbps DSL and have no bandwidth limitations now that they're on Sonic fiber. The same for my inlaws.
by blumberg » Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:04 pm
You now get a >20-30% lower price with ATT Fiber directly vs with Sonic. They also include HBO which is worth $15 per month.

The fact that Sonic had no data cap a year ago (when I signed up) was the selling point for me (It's worth $10-$20 extra) but ATT removed the data caps now. On top of that, ATT offer static IPs (a block of 5 static IPs for $15 per month) which sonic refuses to offer.

At the end of the day, I want to 'stay local' and I'd be willing to pay a few bucks extra to do that, but not 100s of dollars per year. while paying for an un-used landline. Also keep in mind that for any and all support issues (outside of billing issues with Sonic) you are just adding a middleman. So for serious troubleshooting, having a tech come out etc it's all just a support ticket you open with Sonic who then calls ATT to come out and resolve the issue. So you are adding time/complexity if any issues arise.

This whole disconnect, wait x weeks and then re-sign up thing is a really good way to kill customer loyalty.

From the 100s of other posts on this forum it's clear customers want 2 things:

1. No forced landline adding $10 per month to their internet bill
2. Prices to match/align with ATT prices (a few bucks below would make more sense given they won't include HBOMax worth $15 per month)

re#1 -- The landline requirement has been requested for many years and sounds like no change is coming.
re#2 -- They did a poor job on the legal contracting efforts with ATT which is now causing lock-in for customers to a price that can't be changed.

Side note: Customers who want VOIP can buy this unit https://www.obitalk.com/info/googlevoice -- 1 time fee and no monthly cost.
by klui » Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:00 pm
That's the rub. So long as Sonic resells ATT's product they will always be at a disadvantage. I want to support Sonic as much as possible because their corporate policies currently align with mine. While I may never get Sonic Fiber, if they get part of my monthly ISP expenditure $ so they can build out their infrastructure, it's money well spent. It made a difference for my parents and they made a difference to me when they resold ATT packages.

Not everyone has discretionary funds and perhaps in the future I won't either. But I do now and prefer to support them over the incumbents.
by js9erfan » Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:38 am
Longtime Sonic customer here but when Sonic has to rely on ATT to troubleshoot resold service issues it leads to delays and in my case that just wasn’t going to work. I really wanted to avoid Comcast but when my meager ~35/5 FTTNx2 line @ $90/mo. got mysteriously limited to 15/0.5 w/ unbearable latency/RTT and Sonic assumes it’s due to upload congestion (how can you not clog a 500kbps pipe??), that $49/mo. 200/5 Comcast service was just too hard to pass up.

I never did get a final response from Sonic on my ticket but clearly it was an ATT issue and moving to Comcast w/ Ooma voip + no more equipment rental fees was the right choice. If Sonic fiber is available someday in my n/w Santa Rosa neighborhood I’ll gladly come back... Until then, so long Sonic.
by blumberg » Tue Jan 05, 2021 10:32 pm
Is sonic going to run new parallel fiber alongside ATT in the future?

I imagine they'd prioritize greenfield locations before investing in a second run with competition, no?

Just thinking they will never offer direct service where they resell ATT today. It's probably in their contract.
by klui » Wed Jan 06, 2021 1:24 am
Dane has posted here that Sonic will deploy along side ATT. Their primary consideration is subscriber take rate of a city which maximizes their ROI.
by brandonc » Wed Jan 06, 2021 12:26 pm
Yes, we do plan to still run our Fiber alongside AT&T Fiber when we are able to. Our main focus right now is expanding Fiber to areas where we have a dense amount of customers still on DSL infrastructure, so we try to prioritize those areas first. By doing it like this, we can greatly expand our overall Fiber Optic coverage between our own Fiber and AT&T's fiber infrastructure to all of our customers. Then over time, we can roll out our own Fiber to our customer's using the resold AT&T Fiber and switch them over at that point. It's still a long journey ahead, but we will definitely be working hard everyday to get Fiber to more areas!
Brandon C.
Community and Escalations
Sonic
by travlos » Thu Jan 07, 2021 4:33 pm
spencerw wrote:
travlos wrote:Jeff - Just to clarify, the upgrade you mention is a copper line upgrade to fiber, correct? If we already have ATT fiber from the pole, there is no direct upgrade path, also correct?

At the moment, our account does not show an available upgrade to gigabit from our current ~50Mbit service. If I check availability for new service though our address does show 1000Mbps at $49.99/month.

So, as Dane said, there's no direct upgrade path for us, short of disconnecting service and waiting a month or more for new gigabit service, correct?
You are correct. There is currently no direct upgrade path for the service you are using now. We would have to cancel your current service, then order the Fiber service which could take a month or more to be installed.
Jeff, upon reread of your post, something bothers me. You say that we have to cancel our current service, in my case our Sonic 50Mbit ATT fiber service, then order new 1Gbit service but wait a month or more for installation. This implies that the cancel of 50Mbit service will happen immediately, then there's a 30 day (or more) delay for installation.

I believe that is not the case, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think what is happening, is that the Sonic reseller contract with ATT requires Sonic to give ATT 30 days notice on disconnection, and while that 30 day period is ongoing, the Sonic/ATT service will still be active. Once the 30 days is up, ATT will turn off 50Mbit service. Then I believe ATT will then be able to activate new 1Gbit service essentially immediately, especially since we already have fiber from the pole. There might an ONT swap needed, but nothing else, I believe.

Bottom line, I think the 30 day wait is not on a new install, it's just because of the Sonic/ATT resale disconnection contract.

So we may not actually have a 30 day outage, it could be much shorter or nothing at all, depending upon ATT of course.
by blumberg » Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:14 am
Att will not be able to process a residential order for service until sonic-resold service is disconnected. I tried.
by chirano » Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:11 pm
My understanding is that there's also a waiting period after the disconnection before AT&T will process a new order. That's what causes the weeks of downtime. After the 30 days, you finally disconnect from Sonic, but AT&T won't consider new service for a few weeks. After this waiting period, you can finally place your order (with Sonic or AT&T) and then wait for AT&T to get around to establishing your new service.

I think this is relevant, though, only if you're essentially going from one service to the equivalent. For example, the legacy AT&T FTTN to the "new" IPBB-C, either from AT&T directly or through Sonic's current agreement with AT&T. I seem to recall someone from Sonic mentioned in another thread if you were going from, say, legacy FTTN to IPBB-F, there can potentially be no downtime.
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