Shoutout to Sonic.com

[MC BumSlap]

The CEO & founder of Sonic, Dane Jasper is indirectly responsible for my first introduction to the internet in the early 90's. When he was a student employee at Santa Rosa Junior College, he set up a student access, internet connected terminal called Nermal. You could only dial into it via modem / terminal software, and it was purely ascii based - which was fine because there wasn't really much in the way of a world wide web to speak of yet. But it did get me access to IRC, newsgroups, gopher, and what few websites there were could be browsed using lynx.

Weird times. Cool times. Met a few lifelong friends that way.

Never met Dane, but I was an early Sonic user. Once I got that sweet 56k modem, I signed up for their dial-up service. I still have and use my original sonic.net email/log in.

How's Sonic's customer service? We've talked about switching, since they've been bombarding us with postcards about fiber.

Great. I've never had any issues with them over the last, oh 24 years I've used their services off and on. They are in Santa Rosa.

I like the fact they keep their user logs for only 2 weeks for diagnosis purposes. Unlike AT&T and Comcast that keep their logs for well over a year, sometimes two years last I checked.

Sonic.net wasn't available in my new home build last Nov when I moved in so I have Xfinity. Once my agreement is up, I'm switch back to Sonic.

 

[mikev]

Their fiber is only available where AT&T fiber is available. So for those looking to switch...good luck.

False.

Their gigabit fiber is their own.

Their FTTN, which is branded as Fusion on their website, is the re-sold AT&T U-verse which is on their fiber and comes with AT&T branded equipment.

 

[matty]

Sonic has the best customer service I have ever had.

Their trucks installed the fiber in my area, and their techs installed at my house.

Funny, I'm pretty sure they installed fiber in my area too, but while doing it, they draped our line low across the street and a truck hit it and ripped the line out of the pole. I went full Karen on them. A little embarrassing, as it was in front of some neighbors. Whatever, it was right as rain 20 minutes later.

Great.

Good to know about the CS

 

[PorradaVFR]

Damn. We had Sonic DSL for years and really liked them - what sold me was calling for an issue and the damn CEO picked up and talked me through it. Top notch service but they kept delaying and delaying fiber and ultimately canceled our area entirely so we moved on. Glad you could stay with them.

 

[MC BumSlap]

Damn. We had Sonic DSL for years and really liked them - what sold me was calling for an issue and the damn CEO picked up and talked me through it. Top notch service but they kept delaying and delaying fiber and ultimately canceled our area entirely so we moved on. Glad you could stay with them.

From what I understand, their Fibre can only be installed in areas where there are utility poles (at least, that's what I was told). AT&T laid fibre in my new neighborhood so I believe Sonic is just going to use it.

They have a pretty informative online forum.
https://forums.sonic.net/viewforum.php?f=6

 

[PorradaVFR]

From what I understand, their Fibre can only be installed in areas where there are utility poles (at least, that's what I was told). AT&T laid fibre in my new neighborhood so I believe Sonic is just going to use it.

They have a pretty informative online forum.
https://forums.sonic.net/viewforum.php?f=6

No change - 20Mbps for $60 when I currently pay less for Sail and on a good day am in Gigabit range. They just re-sell ATT DSL (with better service and speeds but yeah) in our area.

 

[afm199]

The CEO & founder of Sonic, Dane Jasper is indirectly responsible for my first introduction to the internet in the early 90's. When he was a student employee at Santa Rosa Junior College, he set up a student access, internet connected terminal called Nermal. You could only dial into it via modem / terminal software, and it was purely ascii based - which was fine because there wasn't really much in the way of a world wide web to speak of yet. But it did get me access to IRC, newsgroups, gopher, and what few websites there were could be browsed using lynx.

Weird times. Cool times. Met a few lifelong friends that way.

Damn you're old.

 

[afm199]

Funny, I'm pretty sure they installed fiber in my area too, but while doing it, they draped our line low across the street and a truck hit it and ripped the line out of the pole. I went full Karen on them. A little embarrassing, as it was in front of some neighbors. Whatever, it was right as rain 20 minutes later.



Good to know about the CS

Once Comcast ran a cable across my driveway at about eight feet high. Utility regulations require it much higher.

I didn't call. I just cut it in and two flopped the ends out of my way.

 

[afm199]

No change - 20Mbps for $60 when I currently pay less for Sail and on a good day am in Gigabit range. They just re-sell ATT DSL (with better service and speeds but yeah) in our area.

Sonic fusion is fiber trunk with copper DSL the last mile or so.

Sonic fiber is fiber all the way, and it's fast.

 

[HappyHighwayman]

I get 800 megabits per second download pretty consistently from Comcast. $60 a month, no other services or fees. I've not had bad customer support that they're famous for.

 

[TylerW]

Damn you're old.

 

[gnahc79]

No AT&T gig speeds where I live, so it's only Comcast for me. So far so good minus the ~1hr outage yesterday evening for the entire bay area lol.

be careful if you ever switch from Sonic->AT&T, or was it AT&T->Sonic. Did that years ago to get Uverse and it was a disaster. Sonic and AT&T had to sort something out that took nearly a week. The AT&T store nearby gave us a mobile hotspot as a stopgap, which was super slow.

Sonic customer service is awesome. When I had Sonic the tech assigned to our area lived down the street so he always showed up at the start of the service window