Most internet service providers are gone – Sonic has survived and thrived | Hacker News Reader

Most internet service providers are gone – Sonic has survived and thrived

sfchronicle.com

192 pointsCaliforniaKarl121 comments

I tried to get Sonic at 100 Grand Avenue in Oakland after they put fliers on homes and businesses all around saying "We are coming to Oakland with our own fiber and offering gigabit!" (they have been in Oakland for a long time with their AT&T DSL product). Turns out, they decided to not install to my building (254 unit high-rise), most likely due to a, what I believe to be, illegal exclusive line ownership agreement that my commercial landlords signed with AT&T.

Thankfully, a recent entrant to the inner Bay Area market, Wave G (which has roots in Astound, a name those of you with connection to Walnut Creek might recognize, and RCN) is now providing me symmetric gigabit point to point internet for $80/month with no caps. Just very glad to finally be rid of Comcast.

I will say though that I've previously gotten Sonic at business addresses, both DSL and Fiber, and they have been super great. Glad to see the small guy winning in such a competitive market as the Bay Area.

In the South Bay we have Sail Internet which also does point to point.

illegal exclusive line ownership agreement that my commercial landlords signed with AT&T.

Exclusive, yes. Illegal? Not really. Every apartment building I've lived in has had an agreement with one provider. They don't want to rip open the walls for every company that wants to put in a line. And these days with the way internet providers come and go, I don't blame them.

If you rent, you don't own the building, so you have no say in the matter. If you own a condo, then you can at least influence the board. If you want more control over your home's internet service, buy a house.

The only way around it is to go wireless. Back when WiMax was a thing, the building I lived in had an exclusive deal with AT&T, which could only supply 768k DSL. I got around that by going with ClearWire's WiMax.

Here's the facts I am aware of, with a massive caveat that this was a few years ago and my memory is pretty fuzzy on it:

- When the building was under construction, Comcast paid some amount of money for coax to be installed. Maybe it was extra coax, maybe it was a headend for the building, I don't know specifics, other than Comcast paid the building owners

- In exchange, between 2008 and 2013, Comcast had a exclusive line agreement, only allowing AT&T access

- In 2014, the Comcast contract expired and AT&T created a exclusive lines agreement with building management, only allowing Comcast to exist

- Based on this [0] statement from the FCC, these exclusivity agreements are illegal in apartments

- At the time that I had looked into this, around 2012, I was attempting to get WebPass (pre-Google acquisition) to come into the building. Turns out that my building was a top sales prospect for them, so I worked with their chief sales officer and chief legal officer to craft letters to my management about the exclusive agreement, although never followed through when WebPass had pushback from the company at other properties than my own.

- Wave G was able to install its own hardware (routers on every floor) and ethernet from the antenna on the 23rd floor all the way down to ground level (in preexisting conduit that was installed at construction time) in April 2019. Wave G was only able to do this after executing a side agreement with my building management to gain access. They were willing to do whatever it took to get into the building because we were blocking (physically with height) line of sight to their tower in downtown Oakland and needed to use our roof as a hop. I assume they paid a good chunk of cash to get in.

Just a note, the building owner is Essex Property Trust, a publicly traded REIT with quite a few buildings on the west coast. One other thing, this exclusivity thing is a real issue in Oakland specifically which is why EFF created OICC [1] which I provided my feedback to.

[0]: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-280908A1.pdf

[1]: https://oaklandinternetchoice.com

Tearing up walls is absolutely not necessary. Structured wiring in the building with an MPOE room for cross connects to the carriers is how it works. This is what usually happens regardless of contractual arrangements.

More accurately, the landlord wants to maximize their revenue while minimizing costs. So they sell out their tenants by signing an agreement with a carrier to build the wiring in exchange for exclusivity.

Yes, the building has excellent structured wiring which is how Wave G was able to install without having to do anything more than bolt a few racks to walls and run fiber through existing conduit.

It is, in one sense, illegal. "The NOI provides a history of FCC regulations in this area, noting that in 2007 and 2008 the commission “prohibited providers from entering into or enforcing exclusive agreements to provide services to customers in commercial and residential MTEs.”" - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/exclusive-broadb...

What's not illegal is landlords accepting free services from the ISPs in exchange for their tacit agreement to not allow any other ISPs in. While, of course, saying to tenants that "you can choose any provider you want".

"Go buy a condo or a house" is not an option for the vast majority of people living in apartments. Otherwise, they wouldn't be living in an apartment.

In San Francisco, if your sole reason for buying a house is to choose your ISP, it would be cheaper to launch your own wireless isp.

I worked at Comcast from 2014-2016

Comcast never explicitly signed contracts barring landlords from allowing competing services in, mainly to reduce the scope of legal culpability if it somehow came to such a thing

They would offer very generous (read: free) services to the landlords of buildings however. Especially in large complexes like the one I lived in northern Seattle

I was a happy Sonic subscriber for a few years until I moved. Regardless of the company you use I’m really pleased to hear it’s NOT Comcast/Xfinity/TWC/etc. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder, and fuck them.

The origin of waveG is in Seattle's condointernet and spectrum networks (as54858 and as11404), which were acquired by wave in 2013. Wave also bought astound and cascadelink. Wave later merged with rcn and grande.

Maybe I'm being too picky? Or a maybe I'm just in the minority, bit I don't really like using Sonic. I mean, their internet works, and customer support is fine (but I've had as good a service from Comcast too).

What I find annoying from Sonic is their billing process. I dislike that they foist a random router onto you and charge you $10 a month (and charge you if you want to return it). I also dislike that they force a landline on you and charge you another $10 on you. Who in 2019 needs a landline? What I find somewhat dishonest, is how the sell it. I get that most advertising is not supposed to reflect reality, but it's sort of strange that you get excited about ads that say and "1GBPS internet at $40 a month" and only a year later realize that you're paying $75 a month instead. And that's something that's public, who knows what else about their business is as deceptive.

I suppose that's why Sonic has survived. I suppose that's the kind of business you need to run if you want to have a successful ISP.

> I dislike that they foist a random router onto you and charge you $10 a month (and charge you if you want to return it). I also dislike that they force a landline on you and charge you another $10 on you. Who in 2019 needs a landline?

I've never used Sonic but this describes my Comcast experience completely. Frustrating that we cant get away from these trappings

I don't know where you live, so maybe your situation is that, but I've been on Comcast for years over multiple houses, and I've always owned my own modem and never have had any hidden fees.

It could be tech support lied to you. It wouldn't be a first.

You don't have to rent their modem

You can send it back, but (supposedly) if you do so they charge you a fee to send a tech out in the future. I say supposedly because it seems like a weed-out warning to reduce support tickets from people who made their own problems, but I haven’t had to find out since my Sonic fiber has been flawless for two years. There’s an ONT on the wall where the fiber comes through, providing one data jack and one phone jack. I just plug an ethernet cable between it and my FreeBSD router PC, request a DHCP lease on that interface, and go.

10$? Do you get a dedicated landline-line or is it actually just VoIP?

That depends on whether you get ADSL (6 Mbps per copper phone line, resold AT&T, but a real phone line) or Fiber Optic (gigabit fiber optic to the apartment, but you get an additional box that exposes a phone jack plugged into the ONT in the closet, so presumably VOIP).

I've seen Sonic hook up places in SF with both; they sell the ADSL to try and get the revenue to build out more Fiber.

The Sonic technician I spoke to at my last apartment said we could just leave the phone line unplugged if we didn't need it, but that setting it up was not optional for some bureaucratic reason. (Even made us pick a phone number from a list...)

ADSL2 goes up to around 20 Mbps, VDSL up to around 50 Mbps. Sonic may or may not still sell bonded DSL service. I believe the only resold AT&T service these days is the FTTN offering (resold U-Verse with all the nastiness that involves).

Where I was living in SOMA, it was resold U-Verse that wasn't even FTTN. It was several thousand feet of copper back to the central office. No one knew the exact length, as those records were lost.

Was ecstatic finally moving away from that place to somewhere else.

I've had ADSL2 and VDSL on Bell Canada lines in Ontario, but last I checked (maybe four years ago?) I was under the impression that in SF proper AT&T wasn't able to get permission to build out the nodes to do FTTN/VDSL in many parts of the city.

Since then, I've only lived in new construction where they have fiber to the unit...

That's correct but in neighborhoods where they can't build out the cabinets they either don't offer U-Verse or they sell VDSL as U-Verse.

> I get that most advertising is not supposed to reflect reality

I'm not a lawyer but I'd strongly argue the other way around. Advertising something disconnected with reality is (or, should be) illegal. It's called False Advertising or Deceptive Advertising and it's unfortunately the status quo.

> 1GBPS internet at $40 a month" and only a year later realize that you're paying $75 a month instead

I don’t feel you realize how good you have it. There are even more annoying hidden charges from Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. Moreover, for only 400 mbps I pay $200 a month while you only pay $75 for fiber internet. To be clear my cost is only a temporary discount that will shoot up to nearly $400 in a few months. At which time I will be forced to downgrade

You’re being too picky given the state of the ISP duopoly market. I would gladly switch ISP providers with you if it were possible

I don’t feel you realize how good you have it.

What you're missing is that the price is the same for fiber and DSL. If you're in a part of the Bay Area where all you can get is 3 Mbps DSL from Sonic, they'll gladly charge you that same price (and yes I did this for a while until I realized that Sonic wasn't particularly loyal to their customers).

Oh, and $40 is the promo rate these days.

Yeah I know about their AT&T piggyback DSL service. Yeah, it isn’t a good deal, but $40 for fiber internet is unbelievable. What’s sad is that I don’t live that far away from you. Thanks for your post though. It reminded me to talk to Comcast again. Now I’m paying $140 for 1 gbps

Sonic gig fiber is only $40 if you use thier fiber. Where they resell ATT fiber, it's $80/mth for the first year then jumps to $90.

That's still quite good compared to some parts of the country (like anyone who has to use Spectrum).

If you read my comment, I’m paying $140 / month. That’s only a promotion that lasts for a year. Sonic is still the better deal by at least $60 / month

It sounds like you're buying their DSL service. DSL is delivered over the telephone network's copper. A copper pair is necessary to deliver DSL.

In the 90s, legislation was passed that forced the ILECs to open up their copper networks to anyone. This allowed companies like Covad and Sonic to sell DSL over copper that was owned by the phone company, but the phone company got to charge for access. (I believe this legislation was recently reversed or modified in the phone companies' favor but don't know any details.)

So when you buy DSL you're buying both a few copper wires from the phone company and internet service from the guys on the other end of those wires.

As for who needs a landline... wires can be more reliable than radio waves under certain circumstances.

It sounds like you're buying their DSL service. DSL is delivered over the telephone network's copper. A copper pair is necessary to deliver DSL.

Nope. Before they rolled out the fiber product you could BYOD. Of course before Fusion they would sell you service without a contract and then expect you to call them every time they raised the prices.

With the current Fusion offerings (ADSL, VDSL, AT&T FTTN, FTTH) they promise it's a $40/mo rate, but then omit that they charge $10/mo for the modem rental. You CAN opt out of the modem rental but then the monthly rate goes up to $50/mo. There's no option to purchase the modem outright (and it a junky Pace unit).

At least that's how things were when they first rolled out fiber. There was a ton of confusion and the phone reps dished out information contradicting the support reps who post in the Sonic support forum. Things may have changed since then but I doubt it as Sonic seemed extraordinarily attached to their subpar modem/router things. I ended up paying $10/mo for a defective modem I never used because it was easier than dealing with support.

Oh, and let's say you're a long-time Sonic customer that wanted to upgrade to fiber. Want the $40/mo promo rate? HA! Good luck. Sonic has shifted towards giving the finger to loyal customers in favor of spending beaucoup bucks on new ones. For a while they were even offering ~6 months free if you got a coupon code from Nextdoor (UGH).

It’s $40/mo for the first 6 or so months, then $60/mo. They have been very clear on that in all of their advertising.

I think the mandatory phone service if you get Sonic FTTN (aka resold AT&T FTTN) is also a result of that regulation. DSL is Title 1 but phone is Title 2, or something like that.

> I get that most advertising is not supposed to reflect reality...

It actually is supposed to. A lot of companies just seem to get away with not.

Because people have become so used to it that they forget to complain, and to whom they should complain.

Who in 2019 needs a landline?

People with house alarms. People with fax machines. People with medical equipment that sends information to their doctors a couple of times a day. People who don't trust VOIP providers. People who want to be properly geolocated when they dial 911. People who want to use a phone when the power goes out for longer than a cell phone can hold a charge (think hurricane-prone states).

Here's a good one: People who want to talk on the phone.

I stayed on a remote ranch in New Mexico back in April. The owner was at the next ranch over, about five miles away. I needed to call her, so I picked up the phone. A real land line phone. Good Lord, I'd forgotten what a quality phone call sounds like. It was as if she was right there in the room with me. No awkward cellular delay. Talking over each other was OK and natural and you could still understand the other person. It was an absolute delight. I already have my current place wired with VOIP, but in my next home I'm going to get a landline.

Landlines may not fit into your lifestyle or mindset, but that doesn't mean they don't have value.

Also people who give a shit about latency. G4 is absolute shit for latency, as are all other wireless solutions.

No landline has sounded anywhere near as good as FaceTime Audio to me.

Personally this has been my experience, too

But one should be able to opt out. The problem is that Sonic insists on bundling it in.

"Good Lord, I'd forgotten what a quality phone call sounds like. It was as if she was right there in the room with me. No awkward cellular delay."

Right. I have a friend in Switzerland who had an ISDN voice line. Synchronous 64Kb/s digital voice end to end. No jitter. Swisscom discontinued that recently and now he has inferior VoIP.

> I already have my current place wired with VOIP, but in my next home I'm going to get a landline.

Good luck.

I have Sonic, and it's $64.05 not $75. The promo router is a bit annoying but they only charge you if you return it before the promo period ends or if you keep it after. The land line is annoying but still comes out way cheaper Comcast (at least any plan worthwhile).

I get Bi-directional 1Gbps, top upload from Comcast is 35MBps.

Tested it at 896MBs down/941MBps up from work which has connection that can keep up. Also tested fast.com and speedtest.net *Worth noting most routers you buy at something like Best Buy can't hit those rates in both directions.

As a Sonic subscriber, I can vouch that this is an accurate report, and that their business model is fundamentally to advertise a low price and charge a high one hoping you’ll like gigabit Ethernet enough to keep it.

Another way of looking at this is search engine- and eCommerce-driven price discovery hasn’t given us better prices or more accurate ones, it has just moved money from one set of bad actors (people who rip you off) to another (people who lie about the real price).

That's just not true. They simply don't include taxes in the advertised price, same as everybody else, and because they include voice service in all their plans the taxes add up. You also don't need to use their routers (I don't), but they charge you an extra $10--presumably because of the increased support calls.

Here's my latest invoice. I've had Sonic Fiber for a few years so these are the non-promo numbers:

  Voice Federal Subscriber Line Charge Fee - 6.50
  Voice Federal Universal Service Fund Fee - 2.43
  Voice California Lifeline Telephone Service Surcharge - 0.36
  Voice California Deaf and Disabled Telecom Program Surcharge - 0.04
  Voice California High Cost Fund-A Surcharge - 0.03
  Voice California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge - 0.06
  Voice California Advanced Services Fund Surcharge - 0.04
  Voice California 911 Emergency Surcharge - 0.06
  Voice San Francisco Access Line Fee - 3.49
  Voice California Public Utility Commission User Fee - 0.03
  Voice FCC Interstate Telecom Service Provider Fee - 0.03
  Property Tax Allotment Surcharge - 0.36
  Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge - 0.77
  Fusion Fiber Phone Service -  0.00
  Fusion Fiber - 1 Gbps - 50.00
  Fusion Fiber Information - Data $40.00 Voice $10.00 - 0.00
  Charge Collapsed prorate for 2019-07-01 to 2019-08-10 for 
  Voice Federal Universal Service Fund Fee - 0.73
  Total $64.93

As you can see above, the taxes can vary between localities, so it would be difficult to advertise a specific price if they included them. But, again, nobody else does this. Why single out Sonic in this regard? Equivocating Sonic's product and quality of service with AT&T and Comcast just because of this issue is... not helpful.

AT&T fiber service starts out higher than this for less bandwidth, before taxes.

If everyone jumped off of a bridge, would you?

The contention was that Sonic's "business model is fundamentally to advertise a low price and charge a high one" and that other ISPs will openly "rip you off" while Sonic will "lie about the real price".

I can't see how the bill supports any of those arguments. Sonic indisputably offers lower prices for their service than any other ISP. Their advertising and billing practices are, at worst, indistinguishable in terms of being more misleading. At best they're far better as my experience with Comcast and other telecom providers has been steady increases, whereas I'll be shocked the day Sonic increases their price.

All the voice line taxes might be a surprise to people, but Sonic isn't pocketing that money (except maybe the $0.36 property tax allotment), no more than any other tax, so I don't see how it's a strategy to make more money. Even if they disclosed them upfront their advertised price would go up a commensurate amount along with every other ISP.

I won't argue that the world would be better with greater pricing transparency, but so would world peace and eradicating homelessness. But there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to single out Sonic in these regards.

It would be reasonable to say something like, "Sonic is at least as good as any other ISP, but it would be nice if they also lead the way in terms of pricing transparency". But that's not what was said.

Their advertising and billing practices are, at worst, indistinguishable in terms of being more misleading.

Whataboutism is a pretty weak argument to make. Poor behavior on the behalf of Comcast and Verizon does NOT make Sonic's behavior excusable.

All the voice line taxes might be a surprise to people, but Sonic isn't pocketing that money

It's not surprising, but Sonic IS pocketing some of those "taxes".[1]

First of all Sonic is not being singled out. People complain about Comcast and Verizon all the time. But there's a very good reason to complain: just because some of Sonic's behavior is better than Comcast should not give them a free pass.

That $50/mo rate? The increase was snuck into a footer in the monthly invoices just like you'd expect Comcast to do. After a few decades of few surprises I got out of the habit of checking everything with a fine toothed comb. No heads up to existing customers.

Or how about Dane agitating against municipal internet access? Apparently San Francisco has enough competition for internet access. Sonic is a for-profit business, of course, which means they're not altruistic as much as their talking points might lead you to believe. After all, Google bought into "do no evil" for a short while.

1: https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3804

My ATT is exactly the advertised price. It includes all fees, taxes, and equipment. $90/mo for gigabit (was $70 when I signed up, which reminds me I need to ask about getting the promo rate again).

Interesting. Where do you live? This page, https://www.att.com/local/fiber/california/san-francisco, advertises $50 "Plus taxes. 12mo. agmt req’d. Incl 1TB data/mo., overage chrgs apply. Ltd. Avail/areas. See offer details"

EDIT: Lower down the page it says "Starting at $70/mo. plus taxes for 12 months for Internet powered by AT&T Fiber", so looks like the top of the page is some kind of algorithmic promo? Also, just to be clear, Sonic advertisements also include fine print regarding taxes.

I live in Cupertino.

> As you can see above, the taxes can vary between localities, so it would be difficult to advertise a specific price if they included them.

How is it difficult to advertise $65 for this, and then bill exactly $65?

I switched over to Sonic 1gpbs service last month. I'm in the SF/Bay Area too.

Out here it's $80 a month for the first 12 months, and then $90 a month, but the only hidden service fee I'm getting is the $9.95 a month modem. I can buy one for $70, but tech support told me I'm not allow to remove the modem they issue, which is odd. They didn't say my service would cost $10 more a month.

Still, $90 a month is cheaper than Comcast and AT&T. All you guys paying $40, and even if it turns into $75 is a sweet deal. It's one of the best deals in the country.

> Who in 2019 needs a landline?

Certain first responders, eg those who handle oil spills on mountains in the Pacific North West.

I'm also pretty disappointed with all the fees that showed up on my bill as well. It's faster than my previous service, but not by much. I'll be switching back once my year is over.

I recall reading something about Sonic may be including the landline so they can collect some government subsidy.

I miss the days of competing ISPs. I remember having Speakeasy for my DSL back in the early 2000s and being impressed at the range of services they offered and relatively high speeds they offered for less than what Verizon wanted to charge for a DSL line. Usenet, a shell server, personal webhosting, a POTS phone bank you could use as a backup when you were on the road.

But the limitations of DSL meant they couldn't compete with FiOS. And since FiOS didn't have to deal with grandfathered common carrier laws Verizon wasn't forced to share and they have not. Amazingly, even though the customer service headaches are incredible, you can get a reasonably fast line for not too much money (100Mbit for $35/month) on FiOS. Probably because we have some competition from cable modems. Of course you can't get IPv6 on there, because Verizon's most advanced network ever doesn't support it.

FIOS wasn't actually why that market segment died; it was due to the FCC decision to re-classify DSL [0]. This was in response to a lawsuit resolved a few months earlier that did the same for cable internet connections. [1]

By re-classifying both cable and DSL as Title 1, rather than Title 2, that meant that they were no longer common carriers, and could kick all the competing ISPs off their network. This is why it seemed that most of the third-party providers went away nearly overnight.

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-changes-dsl-classification/

[1]" https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/technology/cable-wins-int...

> The phone companies say that the ruling will free up more of their resources to improve their broadband services, although at least one FCC commissioner says he will be watching to see if that's really the case.

> ISPs such as EarthLink, which already have a hard time competing on price, may still negotiate access contracts with the phone companies but are looking for alternative ways to deliver their services.

EarthLink sold the next year to Windstream for $673 million in an all-stock transaction. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/dial-...

Three years later... Windstream unloads legacy EarthLink internet assets for $330M https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/windstream-unloads-leg...

And Speakeasy to Covad.

Looks like I got out just in time. Verizon's DSL options were notoriously overpriced and slow in my area, and I seriously doubt they got any better once they weren't forced to compete anymore.

Is that what happened? Makes sense. Back in 1999-ish I was a software programmer for a regional ISP. We served the San Francisco-San Jose-Monterey-San Luis Obispo areas. We did dial-up, DSL, ISDN, T-1, 3, OC, wireless (certain areas). We also had a data center and offered a lot of so-called “cloud” services, before it was a buzzword. We did a lot of cool things. But after I left it seemed like the company died when the big ISPs took over.

And since FiOS didn't have to deal with grandfathered common carrier laws Verizon wasn't forced to share and they have not.

While that is true, most of the Bay Area is Pacbell/AT&T territory. GTE/Verizon had a few zipcodes in Marin and I think some in the South Bay but that was it. FiOS is unobtainable for most of the Bay Area.

Of course you can't get IPv6 on there, because Verizon's most advanced network ever doesn't support it.

This is true with Sonic's fiber network too.

Very happy Sonic customer here. I just moved from San Francisco to the East Bay and the process was mostly painless, and when a little glitch did occur, instead of trying to force me to deal with the existence of their internal processes, policies, and silos, something I call Conway's Law For Customers, they just Took Care Of It For Me.

Sonic customer here, but will try to be neutral. The value proposition was probably the best selling point, and they rarely raise prices. There is a certain satisfaction when the odd piece of Comcast advertisement comes by mail offering 2-3x the price for 1/8 the bandwidth from Sonic. Fiber customers can return the residential gateway and use their own router, which saves you $10/month. You have to agree you understand the implications of loosing remote troubleshooting, but I'm sure HN users are savvy in this department.

Prior to getting symmetrical fiber, I didn't have a clue what all that bandwidth could be used for, but again the value proposition was icing on the cake. Years later I still haven't a clue what all of this bandwidth was for. Imagine a kid on a fieldtrip to a famous chocolate factory imagining swimming in a chocolate fountain. The fountain is real, but you dip maybe one strawberry when you get there.

The only customer support call was easily enough to self fix. I just wanted to know if I had permission to touch the equipment in the outside service panel.

Hopefully, more cities push for municipal broadband. That would be if Comcast would stop suing to stop it.

Fiber customers can return the residential gateway and use their own router, which saves you $10/month.

You can return the gigantic Pace multifunction dongle but it'll cost you $10/mo to do so.

Just wanted to chime in about how happy with their residential service in SF. I have their 1Gbps package. With Comcast, this would most often translate to a real-life asymetric 250mbps download, 50mbps upload speed. With Sonic: I'm consistently getting SYMMETRIC 900mbps+! It's insane and comes in real-handy when you're pushing a few gigs of file from your home server to AWS...

Edit: I have cat6 ethernet wired throughout my place.

>With Comcast, this would most often translate to a real-life asymetric 250mbps download, 50mbps upload speed

Don't forget the inevitable data cap!

Former Sonic customer here. I caved and moved to the South Bay after doing the commute for too long and Sonic is honestly what I miss most about the city.

Same here. I can't imagine complaining about Sonic. If I had issues, I could call a freaking human in Mountain View (or whatever), and he'd fix it rather than asking me to cycle the power on my computer.

additionally, because comcast and DSL providers are using existing wiring in what are often very old buildings that are difficult to rewire (at the building level moreso than the unit level), that stuff is often just going through mazes of wiring with tons of interference and really inconsistently performs. fiber is honestly just easier to pull through three stories of 100yo walls than coax, afaict, and it doesn't care if it runs next to power or other data as long as you don't break it.

i wasn't able to get full gigabit when i lived in sf with sonic, but my latency and general reliability was WAY higher than even with comcast business.

I would happily switch from Comcast but when I check availability for where I live in Livermore, they only offer 50Mbps. Currently paying ~180/mo for Comcast gigabit and TV (and phone that I don't use). I would fork over quite a bit for symmetrical gigabit, very jealous!

I used Sonic in Livermore because despite the relatively low speeds, I didn't have to reboot the modem every week like Comcast!

I never use ISP provided equipment, I always use my own. Except when I had AT&T U-Verse, since I was forced to use their proprietary 2-wire modem (which was absolute garbage and required weekly reboots).

However, with Comcast, I can use my own NETGEAR DOCSIS 3.1 modem which has been absolutely rock solid, I have never rebooted it in the two years I've had it.

> I have never rebooted it in the two years I've had it.

That's awesome, but perhaps it needs a software update by now?

No ability to update the firmware manually of Netgear cable modems

I had Sonic fiber for a while. The speeds definitely weren't consistent -- max downloads would suffer (but still be much faster than non-fiber offerings) during peak hours. Plus they still don't offer native IPv6, static IP addresses (they reneged on that), or reverse DNS with fiber (their ADSL offering still does). If all you're doing is "surfing the web" that's probably not a big deal. But it is a step down from the Sonic of yesteryear that was targeted at power users and had excellent customer support.

I worked at an ISP back in the late 90s. We were in the same building as our backbone provider and they simply drilled a hole in the floor and dropped an Ethernet cable down it for us to get our connection. We replaced our custom built dialup racks with something fancier and supported ISDN for the handful of customers who wanted it. The coming of DSL and cable internet was the writing on the wall to get out. The owners sold it to a larger ISP during a frothy period of mergers and acquisitions while the marketplace tidied itself up.

There used to be dozens of ISPs you could choose from in a big market. Sigh.

Visits site > Clicks Check Availability > Enters Address Info > Clicks Check Availability > Google Captcha > Selects Audio (because I've been caught in a loop too many times) > Clicks Play > Enters Text > Receives "Try Again Later..." > Closes Tab

There has got to be a better way. I mean Sonic just lost a potential customer because I won't "Try Again Later".

Ubuntu + Firefox FWIW

so you are complaining that sonic uses google captcha, and google captcha did not work for you today? lol.

It's a valid critism. They decided to use Google Captcha and it often blocks 'advanced' users. ReCAPTCHA often has problems with Linux, non-chrome, VPN users, and users that use ad or javascript blockers.

That's the kind of advanced user that appreciates and uses an internet provider like Sonic.net.

It would be like a mobile phone service provider requiring people to pass a turing test if they call into the sales line from a mobile phone.

Why isn't email verification enough for these services? I don't think they really need to worry about automated services signing up for accounts, so I wonder why they put anything there at all...

Availability tends to be a closely-guarded secret; they don't want a competitor typing in every address in the city and then getting an easy list of customers.

ISPs are way too paranoid about this, though. Simple rate limiting is more than enough. If someone builds a botnet to check what buildings you're available in, maps the addresses to the person in charge of IT at every company in the building, signs the necessary access agreements, digs up the streets to install fiber, then calls your happy customers and asks them to switch, ... good luck to them. Meanwhile, an easy-to-use map or availability checker for potential customers probably has a high probability of getting you a sale.

Back in the early 90's, Metricom used a feature of Xerox PARC's Map Viewer to overlay the locations of their pole top boxes on an interactive map, so you could see the coverage of their Ricochet spread spectrum radio network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(Internet_service)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_PARC_Map_Viewer

I’d suggest calling them. Not only will they help you figure out whether they can provide service to you, by they’ll probably also take your complaint about reCAPTCHA seriously and work to fix the site. Their reps are friendly and helpful, which is such a bizarrely wonderful experience for anyone accustomed to talking with Comcast/ATT.

I don't get a captcha. Odd.

Hopefully of interest to HN readers, Sonic has frequent flyer miles with the EFF as being one of the best privacy-oriented ISPs around, fighting gag orders for customer information, offering VPNs, etc. - this article briefly skims over that, easy to find more info in searches. ( https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2017 ) Probably one of the first all-Linux ISPs to boot. (disclaimer: I've had a Sonic account for just a bit over 24 years, I'm biased)

I had Comcast out recently due to intermittent connection issues. The very first thing he said when he saw my SB6141 was that it was not on the approved list and that it was likely the issue. Of course, he tested the line and found the real issue (their line and connector outside). After he left, I looked it up and my modem is in fact still on their approved list for the 60Mbps that I pay for.

I seriously dislike the state we are in with all the consolidation of communication companies. It's just mind blowing that this has been allowed to happen.

I have Sonic at home, despite that it is basically AT&T dual bonded DSL and slower then my old Comcast connection. Its fast enough and I really like Sonic. Comcast, not so much.

Yeah. Have same here. Ordered via Sonic.net and was confused when AT&T guy showed up to do the whole install.

That being said, still better than comcast, and hopefully they continue to roll out fiber for residential [1].

1 - https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Internet-provid...

What's the reason to not like Comcast? For me it was Sonic at $90/mo for 3 maybe 4mbps (not a lie), or Comcast at $80 for 300mbps. It's a no-brainer there.

I'm not doing anything illegal so I don't care about Comcast cracking down on torrents. The data caps are high enough that I can't hit them in my max-2 simultaneous Netflix streams. Comcast let me buy my own modem instead of using theirs. The only time I lost Comcast service was when all of San Francisco lost power.

Comcast is pretty bad/predatory as a cable TV operator. But we're talking about Internet service, and they're pretty straightforward there.

If you're in SF, can't get Sonic fiber, and really hate Comcast, then you should look into Monkeybrains.

I pretty much agree with all your points. So given Comcast's track record, I've decided to not give them anything I don't have to. I have no reason to believe they will treat their internet customers any better then their cable subscribers. I like the way Sonic does business, so I'm going to support them, even if its slower. Its fast enough for my purposes (and we cord-cut, game, etc)

When I lived in SF I had monkeybrains, I was happy with them, and very happy not to give comcast my money.

How fast were upload speeds with Monkeybrains?

It depends on your building's setup. We have a gig radio on the roof with G.Fast inside the building to each unit. I get 200mbps up and down. $35/mo tough to beat unless you can get Sonic fiber.

I used to be a big support of Sonic for years, but have changed my mind as of late.

They skipped my block for fiber, and I thought there could be some issue (like the fact that a Muni electric line runs down it) that might make it impossible for them to install it. So I asked their tech support if it was going to someday come, or never come.

Sonic would not give me any information. They wouldn't confirm or deny that they'd ever be able to install fiber. They said it would probably happen eventually, but refused to provide even a ballpark figure like "next month, next year, 2 years, 5 years or 10 years".

I finally got a response saying that there were overloaded utility poles on my block and the next block, and that was what was preventing them from stringing fiber. They even sent a map showing which poles were at fault.

So I went to the PUC and worked with them to get the poles replaced, all while sticking with Sonic's slow and expensive ADSL.

Once the poles were replaced, I went back to Sonic and they still refused to say if or when they'd be able to install fiber. Finally (several years have gone by now) someone from the responsible department said that there would never be fiber on my block because of the Muni electric line. What? That's what I asked in the 1st place!?!

After that someone else replied and said that they could actually do it on Muni electric blocks now, but they again refused to give me any semblance of a timeframe. Finally, someone else at Sonic admitted that it could be a very long time, perhaps more than 7 years, because "it's as time consuming to do permitting for a block as it is for a neighborhood" and my block wasn't a priority.

That's all fine, but if so why didn't they say so in the first place rather than giving me a run-around for 3 or 4 years? Wait, I think I know the answer: if they admit that fiber isn't coming any time soon (if at all) people might go to a competitor for faster service!

Pretty cynical, and not what I'd hope for in an ISP committed to transparency. But there you have it: as far as I'm concerned, Sonic just isn't as cool as they seemed.

TL/DR: If Sonic skips your block, they ain't coming back any time soon, if at all, even if the issue that made them skip is corrected.

Sonic, though, has encountered the same problems. For example, some San Francisco utility poles are too crowded to attach Sonic fiber-optic cables onto them. Yet, neither PG&E nor AT&T have a timetable when those poles will be replaced, Jasper said, leaving areas in certain neighborhoods where Sonic cannot reach potential customers.
There have been advances in placing lines underground, specifically through micro-trenching where cables are installed in a small trench that is typically less than 12 inches deep by 1 inch wide. That would make the cost much more reasonable than tearing up and repaving city streets in a large construction project.

But that type of construction isn’t allowed yet in San Francisco. Supervisor Mark Farrell has sponsored legislation to allow such work, noting that about 100,000 of the city’s 865,000 residents lack internet access.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7046772-181/sonic-bat...

Sure,there are all kinds of problems and all kinds of things that could/should be done to fix them. Micro-trenching would be wonderful.

None of that excuses withholding information from customers to prevent them from being able to make an informed decision.

By the way, the "crowded utility pole" issue was the problem on my block. The way I worked around it was to get PG&E to admit that they were also overloaded even for the wires they were already supporting. Then, when they are replaced the new pole has more capacity for some extra fiber.

> Wait, I think I know the answer: if they admit that fiber isn't coming any time soon (if at all) people might go to a competitor for faster service!

It's the opposite: if they say they'll string fiber in 2 years, they get drowned by anrgy requests for status updates if they slip. It's lose-lose for them: commiting to a delivery date gets people angry at them if they slip does to regulatory/admin delays, not commiting to a date gets people fed up and impatient.

What you're saying is the reverse of the situation I'm complaining about.

I'm not saying that they should specify how soon fiber is coming. Yes, then they'd have a support issue as you describe.

I'm saying that they should admit it when they know that fiber definitely isn't going to come any time soon at all, so that people can make an informed decision not to waste their time waiting for it to come.

> I'm saying that they should admit it when they know that fiber definitely isn't going to come any time soon at all

I can't speack for Sonic but I feel like they might not know if something is impossible to deliver in the short term, and the amount of work to give you an accurate timeframe is non-trivial, so they don't do it. To them, there's probably no difference between the "we want to do it but we don't know by when" and "we want to do it but we don't know what's stopping us", since I guess all their delays are unknown unknowns.

Sounds like you'll be waiting for microtrenching anyway, good luck

That's because Sonic is AT&T....

"Sonic will offer the AT&T service under its own brand and with its own customer service."

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3900026-181/sonic-partner...

There's a world of difference between being and partnering with AT&T.

sonic customer here (past through sonic, currently through LMI.net as a reseller).

they're the best ISP i've ever dealt with, and the fact that they've won a court case against AT&T to run fiber through oakland and berkeley is just amazing. their teams are working in my neighborhood now to get this all installed.

i can't wait for my $50/month gigabit internet, complete w/the best customer service ever!

Completely agree. Sonic is a customer service provider that happens to be an ISP.

I've had their gigabit fiber service in SF for the past two years. The few times I've had to call and inquire about a service issue, I was able to speak to someone within a minute of calling. And if you check their forums, you'll find their CEO responding to questions.

omg omg omg! the sonic cherry picker truck was finishing up the fiber work right outside my house this morning... talked to the amazingly nice cablemen and i should have fiber in ~month!

Its really really to hard differentiate yourself as an ISP as most people look to you as utility and ultimately just look at your price. There are in my experience (see below) two ways to measure/review an ISP: 1) Their customer service. 2) Their actual internet product (be it fibre, lte or copper)

Most people get upset,mad and angry when 1(customer service) goes wrong and thus grade the ISP solely on that. They then move to a "better" (read better call centre agent) and usually for a less superior product.

Face-it the "Unicorn-ISP" doesn't exist with excellent customer service and excellent connectivity product.

Fun side-story/plug. I run www.FibreTiger.co.za. South Africa's largest "Internet Comparison Service". In South Africa we have over 15 fibre networks (only 3 or 4 really matters) and a little over a 100 registered ISP (only about 5-7 really matters and we only list about 20. Keep in mind only about 10%-15% of our population have fibre-coverage.

Our biggest problem is most people still don't know how fibre works in our country. I.e you can only get a package from an ISP with a network you have coverage for.

I've once be called "unethical" because I told a lady she can ONLY get fibre from this very specific fibre network in her area. (There was no other fibre coverage for her). Yet no matter how I explained she thought I was restricting her choices.

Oh well :)

My initial experience with Sonic was kinda abysmal (real annoying to have to take 4 hours off work only for the tech to never show up), but it's since proven to be pretty solid (at least for DSL), and even with the tech no-show it was pretty great to just be able to text them back and get what seemed to be a response from a real person almost immediately.

If you are in the Boulder area, Indra's Net is an isp that is still around. They've diversified, but last I checked still offered some dial up service to more remote parts of the area.

https://indras.net/

I'm really looking forward to their fibre rolling out in my neighborhood (for an entire year now). Last week I saw one of their trucks installing cable on the street right perpendicular to me.

So close.

Sonic Fibre is great. I have the gigabit service and I've never worried about the cost because I'd pay $100 for it and it's less than that. Comcast was $89 for 200 megabit.

The only problem is that it disconnected during two CS:GO games leaving my teammates annoyed (mildly) with me.

Also I think it was them who told me about the .org TLD being uncapped and all that and I appreciate that.

I have Sonic's gigabit fiber service and I absolutely love it. I also appreciate that you can get support via SMS.

There is a good interview with Dane Jasper at about 1:11:15, where he talks about this history of Sonic.net.

https://youtu.be/hoxhj4zq0DE

Sonic Fiber is available in my neighborhood two blocks away in every direction. Just not my block. :-( Still switched because I was so sick of Comcast.

Do any ISPs still offer shell accounts?

Here's one that does ;-)

https://www.sonic.com/shell-access

Does anyone have experience with the usenet access it says it provides? I can't find any information on google.

When I last tried a few years ago, I could just point a news reader at news.sonic.net and it worked. I can't test it now because I'm no longer a Sonic customer. (I love many things about them, but where I live in Santa Clara, they could never offer any service faster than DSL, and I finally gave in and switched to Comcast.)

Xs4all in The Netherlands does, but they are a daughter of KPN since 1997 and now in 2019 KPN wants to merge all their brands to KPN. So that ship might sail soon...

I use Monkeybrains in SF. Decent service.

Please Sonic, come to Ingleside Terraces!!!

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