Sonic brings ultra-fast Internet to Sebastopol

[dane]

HP Communications employee William Arevalo uses a cable lasher to install fiber optic cable for Santa Rosa Internet provider Sonic.net along Florence Avenue in Sebastopol on Tuesday

By NATHAN HALVERSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 6:12 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 6:12 p.m.

Sonoma County will soon be home to some of the fastest residential Internet anywhere in the United States.

Sonic.net, the hometown Internet provider that began 17 years ago in a Santa Rosa home, is only a few weeks away from completing the first phase of a fiber optic network that will run directly to people’s homes in Sebastopol.

The blazing fast network, which is many times faster than telephone DSL or a cable connection, will enable home computers to tap directly into the backbone of the Internet. The fiber optic network allows the company to offer Internet connections up to 1 gigabit per second, said Dane Jasper, co-founder and president of the company.

Continued: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... l&tc=pgall

[boblitt]

just wanted to thank Dane and sonic.net for bringing fiber to my neighborhood! I live 1 block off of Florence and I'm not counting down the days I can get a 1 gigabit connection to my house and home office. Thank you also for such an affordable price point, I hope its something you can make money at and we can all enjoy!

keep up the good work sonic.net staff
Nate B

[alexlmchoi]

I really hope Dane will choose San Francisco as the next city doing so! Paying ~50 after tax to get 100M is just SWEET! (Still more expensive than my friends in Hong Kong though...)

[nicknick]

this was also covered on arstechnica. a lot of geeks outside of northern california are getting very jealous!
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... ca-yup.ars

[Guest]

It's ultra-cool that Sonic won't level up the price despite what it must cost to roll out. I'm in Berkeley,so I'm guessing a conservative three years before I'd see it. It wouldn't hurt my ego in the least to be proven wrong if it arrives sooner. :)

I was also informed that the telcos did place in an extensive fiber-optic network many years back,but the cost to benefit ratio wasn't enough then to further expand it,which is why we really never kept up with other countries as far as consumer broadband goes.

Thoughts?

[kbrec85]

Can not wait until this rolls into Santa Rosa. Been wanting to switch to Sonic from Comcast for a long time and this would make it more than worth it.

[nicknick]

It's ultra-cool that Sonic won't level up the price despite what it must cost to roll out. I'm in Berkeley,so I'm guessing a conservative three years before I'd see it. It wouldn't hurt my ego in the least to be proven wrong if it arrives sooner.

I was also informed that the telcos did place in an extensive fiber-optic network many years back,but the cost to benefit ratio wasn't enough then to further expand it,which is why we really never kept up with other countries as far as consumer broadband goes.

Thoughts?

I'm not associated with sonic.net in any way and I'm certainly not someone in the know. That said, I'd be very surprised if sonic.net is able to roll out Fiber to large cities in 3 years except on a very limited basis. I don't think that they have the capital or manpower to undertake large projects in such a short time frame unless a big company (such as Google) steps up to finance the projects. I'd expect a much slower time table and that they will initially focus on small concentrated areas (such as areas around city centers where housing is more dense).

[mlu]

Another vote for Berkeley.

Most people are stuck paying ridiculous prices for Comcast, which becomes quite unreliable during peak hours. Then, you have the DSL options, but the bad copper wiring usually kills it for most people.

It'd be great if fiber came to this area.

[jwthomas]

I live just a half-dozen blocks westward on Bodega Ave and saw this installation going in as I detoured through Florence to avoid downtown traffic. I'm totally satisfied with the speed and service I'm getting now with Fusion but still hope to experience those extra gb's sometime in the foreseeable future. I've been a Sonic.net customer 10 years or more and never had reason to regret it

[robgc]

The plan is to roll out Fiber to the areas with the largest per capita sonic.net presence first.

In other words, the best way to get fiber to your home town sooner is to tell your friends and neighbors about DSL and Fusion.