Review by blarf 
UPDATED: 185 days ago
member for 4.6 years, 38 visits, last login: 185 days ago
 San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
 $45 per month (12 month contract)
 about -1 days
 SBC
 "No PPPoE"
 "Lousy sales team, enough foot dragging to dig a ditch"
 "If only SBC had competition."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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Update 9 April 2008: Resolved.
Update 8 April 2008: As usual, when it works, it works well. In attempting to upgrade to a faster profile (the "Pro-S"), I've found that despite the claims from the sales guy... I'm barely getting more than 1.5Mbps down. In dealing with the tech support and various sales droids, it's been a mild nightmare to get the service restored to the previous price point. In fact the biggest mistake I've made was in still considering Sonic.net for a business account at work. Oops. The sales droid I talked to flat out lied about the action he would take on my account in order to make his sales quota. Now I know that sales people are often sleazy, but one would assume that Sonic's employees are above that. Now I know.
If you don't actually need support from Sonic, it's perhaps a good value... but don't get suckered in by their mis-information. However, there are alternatives with a reputation for reasonable support such as: DSL Extreme, Covad, and Speakeasy. AT&T is not the only fish out there.
Original review: I ordered the "Express" package (1.5/384 with 1 DHCP assigned IP address) on Feb 18th. Being an existing Sonic customer, now living in a densely populated city, I had extremely high expectations of a smooth installation (at least on Sonic's end). I had some expectations of SBC making the install difficult.
As it turned out, the Sonic crew left me with the impression of being a bit naive in their dealings with SBC. SBC of course did their best to avoid selling another DSL loop. The phone line was on a multiplexer, a device that prevents one from installing DSL. The multiplexer also prevented me from attaining dial-up speeds in excess of 26.4kbps. Without the multiplexer the 33.6 modem will maintain 33.6kbps connections just fine.
Upon my order being bounced by SBC for the first time, the helpful Sonic support staffer offered to cancel my dial-up account (as my goal was DSL not dial-up). The second person responded that there was nothing that could be done to convince SBC to provide DSL. Eventually Dane identified the problem (the DAML), and correctly guessed that this is something SBC needed to fix. I spent the rest of the month was spent going back and forth between SBC (via phone and broadbandreports) and Sonic (via phone and e-mail). I was quite disappointed that I had to be so proactive with Sonic.
Without warning an SBC tech showed up today around noon. Said tech took care of removing the multiplexer bits at the house. The Sonic provided modem sync'd at 1.5/384 as expected.
The SBC techs who read the BBR forums deserve a lot of thanks for being able to effect the necessary change resulting in my ability to buy DSL.
Given that everything was hooked up today, I haven't rated the connection reliability. If it's anything like the 6mbit link I had from Sonic at another address, this link will be very reliable. All in all I like the package that Sonic sells. More reliable DNS servers than SBC. No PPPoE. Reliable e-mail service. Multiple commercial NNTP providers to choose from. Even without taking into account the (from previous experience) more reliable connectivity it's a better value than SBC/Yahoo.
The Sonic provided Broadmax DSL modem works. It's smaller and more stylish than my previous Westell unit.
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