Independent California ISP Sonic.net (see our user reviews) started offering ADSL2+ service over their own network last fall, offering tiers in 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 18Mbps flavors. In recent tests in their labs, the ISP tells us the carrier was able to obtain ADSL2+ speeds of 46 Mbps downstream and 4.8Mbps upstream. Of course that was on short loop lengths in a lab environment, but Sonic users living in the real world should be happy to know the company is now offering line-bonded 30 Mbps ADSL2+ starting this week.

According to the Sonic website, the new 30 Mbps "Fusion" tier comes with 2 Mbps upstream, for $80 a month standalone. The company offers a $5 discount if their service is bundled with Verizon Wireless, or a $10 discount if the service is bundled with DirecTV. "For customers who want a standard voice line delivered with Fusion, that service will be available soon," says the company.

Yes, fiber is the future. Yes, that 2 Mbps upstream is looking ragged for a "next-generation" higher end broadband offering.

Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper tells us the California-based ISP has dropped prices on their new Fusion ADSL2+ services, which the company is now offering over their own network. According to a blog post by the CEO, their static or dynamic IP ADSL2+ packages have seen price cuts ranging from $5 to $25, depending on the speed of the package. The company started offering ADSL2+ service over their own network last fall, offering tiers in 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 18Mbps flavors. Earlier this summer the company started tinkering with line-bonded ADSL2+, which should allow the company to offer downstream speeds up to 30Mbps.

For those companies who've sadly decided to milk copper (or have no financial choice), line-bonding is one way to grab additional bandwidth at greater loop lengths out of both ADSL2+ and VDSL. It's something both Qwest and AT&T are eager to begin implementing next year, and Dane Jasper, CEO of California ISP Sonic.net, tells us they're having good luck with ADSL2+ bonding in the labs and in employee trials.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a cut fiber line in California has resulted in a fairly significant outage for landline and wireless customers in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. AT&T has confirmed the outage via Twitter, saying they have crews on the scene with more detail forthcoming. The outage is impacting not only AT&T customers, but wireless and DSL customers with Verizon, Sprint and other competitors such as Sonic.net, which also offered a tweet on the outage.

Update: It appears that "sabotage" may have been responsible for the outage.

Sonic.net CEO Dan Jasper stops by our forums to note that the California ISP is tinkering with a new online backup service that delivers fifty gigs of storage for $4.95 a month (or 500MB for free). In a blog post, Jasper indicates that it's a soft launch as they work out the kinks.

California-based ISP Sonic.net continues its growth as a CLEC, and just last week started offering ADSL2+ speeds to residential users on their own network, an unfamiliar tale of CLEC growth in an industry dominated by larger players. Sonic CEO and regular reader Dane Jasper blogs about the new service, saying the first customer to go live is in Santa Rosa, California.

The town of Sebastopol, California had planned to throw up a few wireless access points downtown, until a few locals, obsessed with "electrical sensitivity," derailed the effort. According to the O'Reilly blog, said locals banded together and signed a petition against the project, citing research that shows Wi-Fi is hazardous to your health.

California-based ISP Sonic.net continues its growth as a CLEC, and will soon offer ADSL2+ speeds to residential users on their own network. Sonic CEO Dane Jasper tells us they've launched in their home market of Santa Rosa and are now offering business customers Ethernet, T1, Dual-T1 and ADSL2+ services.

We're hearing from several sources over the past few days that AT&T is raising the wholesale loop charges for ISPs who do business with them. It looks like the changes should officially start on May 16, 2008, but you may start seeing your independent ISP raising DSL prices before then if they work with AT&T (some may be noticing the price hikes already).

Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper stops by our forums to note that the DSL provider is now giving customers a free new domain name and site hosting for all DSL, dialup, and satellite customers. The domain registration is free for the first year, and costs $9.95 a year after that. The hosting stays free for as long as customers remain with the ISP. Jasper, one of the more accessible industry CEOs, can frequently be found answering questions in our Sonic.Net forum.

Users in our Comcast forum over the last several weeks have been reporting some difficulty getting Google to load properly. Users at Slashdot automatically tie the problem to Comcast traffic shaping, highlighting a Something Awful thread which suggests that the Sandvine gear Comcast uses to send injected fake RSTs (in order to limit BitTorrent upstream bandwidth consumption) is somehow disrupting Google connectivity: story continues..

Independent California-based DSL ISP Sonic.net has launched the San Francisco WiFi Project, an effort to deliver free Wi-Fi to San Francisco residents. The company is offering inexpensive Meraki gear (previously discussed here) to customers at a subsidized rate.