Review by oddhack 
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 3.7 years, 18 visits, last login: 174 days ago
 Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
 $23 per month (12 month contract)
 about 4 days
 SBC
CLEC party: SBC
 "Every step of the ordering & install process went smoothly"
 "None"
 "Two thumbs up"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I'd been looking for alternatives to Speakeasy for several months and pretty well settled on Sonic.net due to their sharing the same virtues Speakeasy had when I started with them in 2001 (small, local, responsive, Linux-friendly). Finally the Best Buy acquisition of Speakeasy pushed me over the edge.
Ordered on Monday morning, had the install scheduled for Friday. DSL modem arrived on Wednesday. Woke up on Friday, restarted the old Speedstream 5620 modem, reconfigured the NAT box for DHCP, and I was up and running.
I'd ordered Pro service (3.0/512) and was seeing about 1.5/400 initially. Talked to Sonic support on Friday afternoon; they looked at the line stats and had AT&T turn it up. Now getting about 2.6/430. Seems a bit low when I'm only 6600 feet from the CO, but it's early in the process and perhaps some things can be tweaked still. The Sonic-supplied Zoom 5615 seems to perform just marginally better than the old Speedstream, though the difference is down in the 1-2% range. In any event it's a big boost from the Speakeasy 1.5/384 service level, and I'm paying $40/month less (OK, that's the introductory teaser rate, but even without that it's a net win).
Thus far I'm very happy. All my interactions with Sonic, whether presales qual, sales, or support, have been smooth, efficient, and pleasant. And my nightmares of Geek Squad employees picking up the phone when I call for tech support have gone away.
OT: why does the review form list "Pacbell" for TELCO and CLEC? It's all AT&T now, not even SBC anymore much less Pacific Bell. Not that I like them any better no matter what they change their name to - they're still the Phone Company.
Update to add: Sonic support contacted me in response to the review and explained the amount of framing overhead expected. With that taken into account, the 2560/435 numbers I'm seeing seem right on the money for a line capped at 3000/512, so changing the "connection reliability" rating accordingly.
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