by
dane » Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:58 am
coyote2 wrote:racker wrote:I looked hard today and the pole on my street has a "AT&T Fiber" cable on it! But AT&T doesn't offer fiber service to my home (or other addresses along my street). What does this mean for Sonic?? Oh no!
I don't think there's a fibre cable on my pole yet (even with binoculars I don't see any labelled AT&T *or* Sonic; which is odd, since AT&T keeps telling me they can give me fibre [and I keep telling them I don't like their corporate policies {data caps, net neutrality, privacy} or their fibre prices]), but that reminds me:
Last September an AT&T installer hooked me up with a DirecTV satellite dish, and while doing so he also mentioned that I could get fibre from AT&T, and when I told him all the reasons I wanted it from Sonic
he said Sonic was leasing AT&T fibre lines. True?
Sorta, in some locations. But not where we have our own fiber - that's all us.
Sonic has a number of products; I'll set the wayback machine to 1994 and start there, and use "incumbent" to refer to what was Pacific Bell -> SBC California -> AT&T.
- c. 1994: Dialup access. Incumbent phone lines and voice switch, Sonic modems and internet. Obsolete.
- c. 1998: DSL access. Incumbent copper and DSLAM, aggregated to Sonic routers, with Sonic internet. Still in use, but no longer sold to new customers.
- c. 2008: Fusion Broadband+Phone. Incumbent copper wires, but Sonic DSLAM, Sonic internet and phone service. Great product if you're reasonably near the CO. Later, dual-line "X2" variant allows for doubling of internet speed for an extra $20/mo. Initially technology was ADSL2+, later VDSL2 was deployed allowing for up to 100Mbps.
- c. 2012: Fusion Fiber. 100% Sonic end to end. The ACME of everything. Gigabit symmetric access, zero incumbent facilities.
- c. 2014: Fusion FTTN. Incumbent copper to a neighborhood cabinet, incumbent DSLAM, incumbent internet. Gap-filling product, but clearly a step backward in many ways for us - but meets needs of those further from CO. X1 and X2 variants available, at up to 20Mbps and 50Mbps respectively.
- c. 2018: Fusion IP Broadband (FTTN renamed, adds Fiber too). Incumbent fiber to the home or incumbent copper to a fiber node, offers speeds of up to 1Gbps with a new X3 tier, at an extra $20/mo. Again, fills gaps in our own network.
We have chosen to keep the product simple: at a given location, just one of these products is available and will be offered. All of them include unlimited internet usage without data caps, and all include unlimited global phone service. Price points are uniform too, and a simple set of X1, X2 and X3 tiers with $20 steps.
The endgame is simply Fusion Fiber, our own fiber, which is now available at more and more Bay Area homes as we continue to build. This is an unlimited symmetric full gigabit service, at the lowest (X1) price point. We've got many customers today who had a sequence of Sonic products over two decades: Dialup -> DSL -> Fusion -> Fusion FTTN -> Fusion Fiber. That's the dream! (And BTW, that sequence also looks like this: 56kbps -> 6Mbps -> 20Mbps -> 50Mbps -> 1000Mbps.)
And BTW, where an off-net resold wholesale service is offered, the IP Broadband product, the product description will clearly provide this information - and of course at the gigabit speeds you'll see higher, X3 pricing as compared to lower X1 pricing for Sonic's own fiber. In the locations where IP Broadband is offered, you could get that same product from them directly, but with a monthly usage cap and usage based billing, and without the included home phone service. These two features, plus of course Sonic customer service, are the primary reasons to purchase that service from us instead of them.
Oh, and of course, supporting our mission to build fiber and fix the internet in America. That too.
So if Sonic Fusion Fiber is not yet available at your location, sign up for the service that we can provide there, as long as it's a good fit for your needs today. Doing so supports the overall mission - scale is critical, and every subscriber counts.
