Most internet service providers are gone – Sonic has survived and thrived • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by t34543 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:16 AM UTC

robbiet480 wrote: post #38

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…

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.

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

#102

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:19 AM UTC

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.

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

#103

Post by azinman2 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:27 AM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #39

Random_BSD_Geek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 legis…

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 prom…

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.

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

#104

Post by atarian » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:31 AM UTC

zalthor wrote: post #22

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…

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.

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

#105

Post by walrus01 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:36 AM UTC

robbiet480 wrote: post #38

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…

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.

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

#106

Post by rawoke083600 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

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 :)

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

#107

Post by DonHopkins » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:30 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #77

beatgammit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 necessa…

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

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

#108

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:38 AM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #84

terinjokes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#109

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 8:04 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #78

inferiorhuman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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]

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.

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

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

#110

Post by Drdrdrq » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 8:05 AM UTC

vinniejames wrote: post #44

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.