|
Home | Reviews | Speed Test | Tools | News | Forums | Info | About | Join |
=============================== 02 - 06 - 2016 Update: Port out process with Sonic was a complete nightmare. They couldn't provided me with correct information until after 2 weeks. I posted my porting process in the following thread. »Tips on porting phone number away from Sonic? =============================== Original Review: I've been with Sonic since 2011 when AT&T introduced caps on their DSL package. An year later, when Sonic Fusion service became available in my area, I signed up immediately so I had full ADSL2+ and phone service from Sonic directly. Sonic offers internet + phone package called Fusion and advertised as $40. With taxes and fees, it comes out roughly $50/month in my area. The service is outstanding. I can't remember the last time I had connection outages. Although my connection wasn't fast in terms of speed (16 down/0.85 up), it was the most reliable connection I had. There was no drops, or slowdowns during the use at any time of the day. On the other hand, because my connection is so reliable, I can't really comment on their recent customer service. It was known to be excellent by many other Sonic customers in the past, but recently I've heard lots of complaints of long waiting times, inadequacy, etc. But of the few experience that I did have, I don't recall having any issues with their customer service. The bad thing is that Sonic, for the most part, is still relying on the copper technology. If you were lucky and your loop length was short (2000 ft or less), you can expect to have much better speeds (up to 100 Mbps bonded with VDSL X2). But if you were in the "middle of the road" loop length (I'm around 4700 ft), only option you have is ADSL2+ (typically 15/1 at most). I know Sonic is expanding their fiber network, and while that's great for people who qualify, it's long and slow process. If you're not even on the Sonic's fiber build out list, it could be a decade before you get to see any fiber or maybe never, who knows? I stayed with Sonic for over 5 year and I don't regret it, but having the same speed 5 years after doesn't seem encouraging either. Sonic does have bonded option (X2) to double your speed, but paying $70/month for mere 30/1.7 upgrade wouldn't be worth it. So I'm currently in the process of switching to Comcast Xfinity because I could use more speed. I'm really sad it came down to this and I'll miss Sonic, but I won't miss their speed. All in all, Sonic is great option if you can get their fiber, on a short loop length, or you just don't need much bandwidth and want great, reliable service. But otherwise, it's hard to justify paying more than $50/month for a decades old and slow copper technology. member for 19.7 years, 357 visits, last login: 348 days ago updated 1.6 years ago
Note: Updates to this review are at the bottom. An open letter to Sonic: I have been your customer for years, but I don't think I can remain with your company for much longer. Simply put, you aren't offering me enough value for my money. Despite waiting for years, I am stuck on slow DSL speeds well below even our country's pitiable average. I can't even get the Fusion upgrade that your June 2015 forum post claims to be available. But if I could, would it really matter? With the usual $40 fusion fee, about $10 in taxes and miscellaneous line charges, and an additional $20 per month on top of all that, my bill would be around $70/month; it is around $50/month now. At such prices, I would pay less for a data-only plan from the local cable company (even after the promotional period) and a VOIP service like Ooma. You might argue that Sonic is a victim of Congress, Supreme Court, and even the FCC. I for one cannot deny that our flawed laws are responsible in large part for the sorry state of our nation's Internet access. Being the victim, however, will only get you so far. You are running a business; not a charity. Mere pity will not earn you new customers. Nor can you permanently depend on the local telco to generously lease you their dying copper lines. In Dane's own words, "...your Fusion service gets better as we grow. Subscriber growth is the key...". By this logic, a customer would first have to sign up for inferior service, then convince all their neighbors to sign up for the same inferior service so that one day in the distant future, your fiber service might make its way to their area. But what do we do in the meantime? With fiber being the most promising option for data transport in the foreseeable future, you need to figure out a way to deploy it to more regions more quickly. For years, users have asked about your expansion plans in their areas. Likewise, your own blog posts and the press have touted Sonic's expansion. A 2014 Press Democrat article, for example, describes Sonic "expanding at lightning speed." But let's pause for a moment and consider what this lightning speed really means. How many cities in California actually have access to Sonic's Fusion Gigabit service? Let's not confuse the lightning speed of your fiber-optic network with the speed at which the network actually expands. All the speed in the world is useless if customers can't even sign up for service. Even if customers gave you the benefit of the doubt regarding factors that may arguably be out of your control, your stubbornness as a company extends far beyond that. For example, I remain shackled to a phone line I do not need because of your refusal to separate data service from phone service. Even if I signed up for the local cable company's overpriced Internet service, they would at least allow me to receive the data service unbundled. With so many VOIP options available, can you give me one compelling reason why I need to be paying you for voice service? This comes from someone who may still have some limited need for a second phone number. How impressed do you think a cell phone user with unlimited minutes and an unlimited data plan would be by your "fast and inexpensive Fusion Broadband+Phone" plans? If I switched to the local telco, I would at least be able to pay for just a phone line, or, with some hassle, perhaps even a dry loop DSL line. Ironically, a user who switches from their telco to Sonic, believing they are exercising their freedom of choice, may find that their choices are in fact more limited than ever. Don't want the phone line? Go find another ISP. Don't want the data plan? Go find another phone company. You cannot retain and attract customers merely by using trifles to make them feel they are getting their money's worth. You need to provide such excellent and competitive services that they beg to pay you more for them. You need to offer genuine choice. You can provide a fax service that is rarely used, a VPN service that until recently only supported the IPSec protocol, and even a free personal web hosting service. But at the end of the day, I just don't want to be looking for reasons to justify paying for an unnecessary copper phone line. Your premium web hosting services, by the way, are significantly more expensive than comparable services provided by other hosts. You are one of the few companies that actually care about user privacy. Compared to other ISPs, your technical support team is knowledgeable and helpful. Dane even welcomes being regulated as a common carrier by the FCC. What's not to like about Sonic? Your philosophy of respecting and fighting for user privacy is admirable. However, without the provision of competitive services, your philosophy will remain just that; a philosophy. Step out of your ivory tower for a moment, and you will see that exemplary support for subpar service is pointless. I sincerely hope the very stubbornness that helped you succeed as a small business won't also be your undoing. I truly wish you will be the one to end the evil cable/telco duopoly and change the pathetic state of our nation's Internet service. But with the way you are doing business now, I would be surprised if you are the one to do these things. Please prove me wrong. Prove that the "unlikely success" of Sonic.net described in 2012 by Ars Technica continues. Prove that in the most populous state of the nation that invented the Internet, the dream of $70 Gigabit Internet is still alive. Update (2/11/16): I'm dropping tech support from 5/5 to 3/5 due to the duration of wait times. It used to be the case that wait times were under 5 minutes, but when calling Sonic some weeks ago, I had to wait 30-45 minutes just to hear a human being come on the line. I hope this is only temporary. Update (6/29/16): I'm still with Sonic, but ironically, the reason is the opposite of what I had thought it would be when I wrote my initial review. I still have Sonic's service because I need 911 calling and in terms of the landline, Sonic provides far better service and pricing than my local telephone company. VOIP is of course an option, but I'm not convinced of the reliability of having to depend on the Internet connection in emergencies. Many years ago, I paid the large phone company in my area roughly $15 less for only basic phone service. By basic, I mean: 1) No long distance. I even had to look up phone numbers that were in the same area code to make sure there were no extra charges 2) No caller ID 3) I paid a listing fee every month to not have my phone number be placed in directories. Outrageous. Even though the service remained the same over the course of several years, the fees gradually crept up. If I switched to the large telephone company in my area, it's possible I would be paying the same as I am paying Sonic now but receive far less features. Here's the full list of features Sonic's landline provides: »wiki.sonic.net/wiki/Fusi ··· oice_FAQ I have to give Sonic full credit for their phone service; if you need a landline, Sonic provides quite a number of potentially useful features. Sonic's Internet service, however, remains as slow as ever. If the only reason you haven't cancelled your service is because you need 911 calling, that's not exactly a compliment. If I could pay for only phone service and lose the Internet connection, I would, but Sonic forces the bundle, so I'm going along with it due to lack of choices ... for the moment. So my initial critique of Sonic's forced bundling of services remains as valid as ever, even if it's now the phone line I need rather than the Internet connection. If you've just moved to an area Sonic serves but has no fiber, what's Sonic's appeal? It certainly isn't in the slow Internet speeds. Even ideal speeds of 20 mbps would pale in comparison to cable competition, and how many people can get those speeds? Sonic's homepage touts "Gigabit fiber Internet on the way." Is it? I've been waiting for years; I imagine some have been waiting for close to a decade. Is it the phone line? Probably only if 911 service is a necessity. Even then, many Fusion customers are on VOIP instead of copper. And despite my reasons for keeping the copper line, I imagine I'm in the minority. Some might feel that a combination of VOIP, modem battery, UPS, and cell phone is enough for their 911 needs. Is it the VPN or the fax service? Probably not; those only cost a few dollars a month from other providers. They might save you a few dollars per month if you already need one of their main services, but that's it. Is it flexibility? Sonic's homepage lists as one of its selling points "better bundling." In terms of bundling, your local telephone company would happily sell you Internet alone or phone service alone, but Sonic will not, although I concede their phone service is far superior to basic phone service from the telephone company. "Award-winning privacy policies" is still true, however. Update (September 2017): Sonic's phone support wait time have gone down. I now wait roughly 10 minutes for an agent when I call in. In addition, the agents I speak to are generally knowledgeable or know to ask someone else for help when they are unsure how to answer my questions. I've raised tech support's rating to 4/5 for these reasons. 10 minutes is not ideal, but it's also not as painful as it was in early 2016. member for 8.6 years, 10 visits, last login: 5.1 years ago updated 6.5 years ago
Signed up for Fusion FTTN, as this was the only package Sonic had available to my residence in Foster City. Sonic resells AT&T services, so you are required to use the lease equipment, you cannot provide your own modem. You can piggyback your own router behind theirs, but you're still dealing with their modem and router. The advertised $40/mo price became $60/mo ($70/mo with a $10/mo promo credit). Add the requirement to lease the AT&T modem/router, AND the ATA device required to connect a landline phone to the service. This device and the landline phone are required, NOT OPTIONAL! And, being a phone line, included all of the taxes and fees that accompany a voice landline. So, my monthly bill with all the fees, is shown below: Voice Federal Universal Service Fund Fee 0.50 Voice California Lifeline Telephone Service 0.38 Voice California Deaf and Disabled Telecom 0.04 Voice California High Cost Fund-A Surcharge 0.03 Voice California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge 0.09 Voice California 911 Emergency Surcharge 0.06 Voice California Public Utility Commission 0.02 Voice FCC Interstate Telecom Service 0.01 Property Tax Allotment Surcharge 0.38 Voice Regulatory Recovery Surcharge 0.47 Fusion FTTN Phone Service 0.00 Fusion FTTN Residential X2 70.00 Price increase offset discount (expires: 10.00cr Fusion FTTN Information 0.00 Data $60.00 Voice $10.00 Fusion FTTN Modem Rental 9.50 ATA Rental 6.50 Total: 77.98 The service was adequate but slow, especially during peak hours (5pm-11pm M-F). The AT&T router wifi sucked, forcing frequent reboots of the router and of wifi devices. So, fast forward 10 months. I'm moving into a new apartment that is outside of Sonic's service network. I call on the last day of my residence in the old apartment to cancel my service, aware I might have to pay a early termination fee. Sonic requires a 30 day notice to terminate service. Yeah, you read that right. 30 DAYS NOTICE!!! Nowhere on their website or in their account paperwork is this indicated. The early termination fee can be waived if you provide proof of your new address and it's not covered by Sonic (well, there is at least that). Oh, and remember the hardware you were required to lease. They're gonna want that back. They'll provide you a shipping label, for a price. And there is no options to drop off the equipment. Can't believe I'm about to say these words... "I'm so happy to be back with Comcast." member for 6.5 years, 1 visits, last login: 6.4 years ago updated 6.5 years ago
Updated 2017/04/11 In February, Sonic rolled out a systemwide $10/mo. price increase, which was coupled with another $10/mo. increase after the first year's promotional price went away. The result is that I'm now paying around $91/mo. for 40 Mbps DSL. This is in no way competitive - AT&T's restructured offerings would give me 100 Mbps for $60/mo. (first year), $70/mo. (second year). Sonic's supposed motivation for this price increase is to give them funds to build out their fiber network. However, they have also been very clear that they will never build fiber in areas where AT&T or other companies already have fiber installed - which means that for the vast majority of Sonic's customer base, they've imposed a 25% price increase to build a service that those customers will never receive. Unsurprisingly, this has generated a great deal of unhappiness on Sonic's own customer forums, with a thread now up to about 500 posts and a number of customers who have left. I may become one of them soon. I strongly dislike AT&T, but getting 2.5x the performance for 2/3 the cost is pretty compelling - and the money saved will pay for a high-quality VPN service. I appreciate Sonic's attitude towards privacy but they are no longer in any way cost-effective for customers who aren't on their fiber network, their support staff is so terribly overburdened that extremely long wait times are normal, and their CEO is pushing a strategy that makes no sense at all for most of their customers. I won't say the writing is on the wall for Sonic, but I don't understand how what they're doing can possibly work for them in the middle-term, much less long-term. Updated 2016/06/22 After moving to Alameda, I was very fortunate to be located close enough to the CO that Sonic's own VDSL2 x2 service was available. Most of the island is limited to much lower ADSL2+ bandwidth, or Fusion FTTN through AT&T. My initial download speed was around 35 Mbps, which was well below the minimal estimated performance at my reported distance from the CO. Sonic was reluctant to call out an AT&T tech to look at the lines, but after some prodding on their own customer forums, they did send someone out. He found my loop went a block in the wrong direction before heading back to the CO and changed it out, boosting performance to the 40-41Mbps range. That's still disappointing, but it is within the low end of the speed band for this disance. The rental VDSL2 modem is enormous and I'm considering buying my own replacement. I have had considerable interest in helping Sonic get fiber deployed on Alameda, and have been in touch with a bunch of neighbors on Nextdoor as well as the city mayor and her IT manager. However, Sonic has been completely unresponsive to my questions on what specific actions might facilitate their wanting to deploy here. All they'll ever say is a boilerplate "tell your neighbors to become Sonic copper-line customers because our deployment plans depend on uptake in an existing area." Unfortunately, Sonic's DSL performance over most of Alameda is so dismal compared to cable providers that this is an impossible sell - poor performance today for the slight chance of better performance, at some unknown time in the future. Whereas municipal fiber on this small, affluent, and (at one point) already wired for fiber island seems like a no-brainer. TL;DR this shows the basic problem Sonic is having. They don't have the resources to roll fiber in very many places, and at the same time, their competitive position continues to decay on the legacy copper products they provide. I don't see how they get out of this trap. I like Sonic's service, but prices are no longer competitive; performance definitely isn't, even on VDSL2; and customer service is terribly overloaded and no longer gives quick turnaround on almost anything. I stay with them because I hate AT&T and Comcast so much, basically, but eventually the performance gap will be so huge I'll feel compelled to switch. Updated 2015/07/27 After moving to Los Altos recently, the existing Fusion service was a dismal 2.8 Mbps. Sonic's website only offered Fusion X2, which would not have been a meaningful improvement. They have a weird policy in place where if you lie between ca. 4400' to 7000' from the CO, they will only qualify X2 as an upgrade. After telling a rep on the Sonic customer forums that they were about to lose a customer, he authorized a Fusion FTTN (e.g. resold AT&T U-Verse) install at my new address. It took two weeks to get the AT&T tech out, but when he came he was quick and efficient, and the new service is delivering about 8x the performance of the old. The VOIP ATA has some issues - every call begins with a few minutes of clicking that eventually goes away - but basically works as well. I am less than pleased by the required rental of the AT&T-locked modem/router - there is no option whatsoever as an FTTN customer - and required rental of the ATA. I already have a perfectly functional Obi 202 ATA which cost $0 when used with Google Voice. But OTOH, the voice taxes are much, much smaller than regular Fusion service, so I'm only paying a few bucks more for FTTN than I was for Fusion. I'm also annoyed by the 12 month contract requirement - which is again due to AT&T AIUI. I'm most annoyed that AT&T openly spies on its customers' U-Verse traffic. Sonic is working on some OpenVPN options that will help here, but they're not ready for prime time yet. At this particular address, I'm quite close to the RT (I think about 400'), and line performance shows it's capped at 60 Mbps - I could probably get close to that speed by upgrading to Fusion FTTN x2 for an additional $20/month, but 23 Mbps is such a big improvement over regular old Fusion that I'm OK for now. Overall, in terms of performance and stability Fusion FTTN is fine for me. The price is acceptable. The dependence on AT&T and its intrusive monitoring is extremely annoying, but it's the only game in town at this point - Sonic is in a very bad spot and locked into the abusive AT&T relationship until and if Sonic can deploy fiber widely. Sonic's VDSL2 option would be great, but only works for the relatively few customers who are really close to the CO. Updates 2014/10/27 Sonic hasn't changed my service technically. Fusion continues working just fine. They've even allowed an opt-out of the annoying modem rental policy for new customers. The camel in the tent, though, is that Sonic hasn't changed my service technically. Dane has been talking about fiber for years and they have nothing to show for it aside from a pilot project. Attempts to deploy fiber appear to be stalled everywhere, either because of NIMBY/permitting issues or because it's just too large a project. Meanwhile I'm stuck on a line that gets 8 Mbps down at the best of times. Recently Dane has been talking up VDSL2, but that won't benefit customers who are as far away from the CO as I am. Bottom line: as much as I like Sonic, and as much as I hate AT&T/Comcast - if Sonic can't figure out how to provide even vaguely competitive speeds, I don't think I'll be a customer much longer. I can no longer recommend Sonic to most people since they performance is so terrible (I convinced my SO to switch from Comcast - now she's getting 1/10th the performance and can't tolerate it for much longer, either). Updated 2012/07/06 Since my last update, DSL and voice service have generally been great (once in a great while it can fail to ring through for voice calls, for no obvious reason). Unfortunately, Sonic has just instituted a new policy requiring customers to rent modems - at $6.50/mo + $9 shipping fee - and more importantly, is hiding the fee from new customers. You can find out your true cost - in exactly the same fashion as Comcast, by clicking and clicking through multiple pages of fine print and adding up all the fees and charges and so on. Sonic's CEO has posted an announcement that they're doing this because it's "industry standard practice". What he doesn't seem to consider important is that Sonic's customers often are customers because they do not want to be subject to industry standards as established by the major telcos and cable providers. Announcing they're enthusiastically headed down that path means that I can no longer recommend Sonic.net to anyone, even though my own service has been fine (and probably will be, for a while yet... of course that was true at Speakeasy too, until they sold out). Updated 2011/02/15 I think Sonic has just resolved the one significant bobble with my Fusion install: my phone number was swapped with another customer! There was a certain amount of finger-pointing between AT&T and Sonic over this (and an AT&T tech showing up at my door for no clear reason related to the problem). Didn't affect the DSL part at all but it was getting kinda frustrating, so glad to have this working. So far I'm getting ~6.5-7 down / .7-.9 up using my old modem in ADSL1 mode. Hopefully the new modem on order will do better, I'm only about 6000 feet from the CO. But even this is twice the performance I was getting with DSL Pro and ends up costing about the same as the old DSL + AT&T landline. Updated 2011/02/10 Just switched to Fusion voice + ADSL2+ service after several years on regular Pro DSL. As usual the Sonic.net guys on the phone were very friendly and helpful, even though I know they're understaffed and very busy thanks to the demand for Fusion. Switchover scheduled for 6 days from ordering at 11 AM, line went down around 11:05 for about 5 minutes and came back up running at ~6/0.7 Mbps on the same old ADSL1 modem (and ADSL1 filters), about double the old performance. I have dial tone but haven't made any calls yet Ordered a D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ modem from Newegg to replace the Zoom ADSL1 modem I have now. It is cheaper than the equivalent Sonic.net offering and, more importantly, is from a company I've actually heard of before. Original ADSL1 Service Review 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. member for 19.3 years, 78 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago updated 6.9 years ago
1/15/2017: Price increased another $10 ($60 total). Lowered value rating. With no schedule/plans for areas that don't have fiber, seems like POTS customers are paying for fiber users in affluent neighborhoods. May have to consider alternatives soon. I will give credit that DSL has been more stable than Comcast has been in the area in regards to outages. 11/2017: Contract expired. Price increased to $50/month. 1/30/2016: Read about the labs option in member tools. Fusion users can easily flip between fastpath and interleaved with a click of a button. Neat. 1/22/2016: Read about the 1 free static IP. Changed from Dynamic and deleted the DD-WRT Firewall rule. 1/15/2016: Tried returning equipment. Rep told me the $20 promotion would expire if I did. That practice is slimy Sonic since that's not really a $20 promotion. Waited for 10 minutes before speaking with no ETA or queue table told to the caller. ----------Original Review---------- Took two weeks to activate service. Looking to return rental equipment soon. Overall, service is as expected. DHCP for dynamic leases are 5 minutes. Need to add a firewall rule for DD-WRT users to push forward DHCP WAN changes. Service is ~ $36/month with a one-year contract promotion. member for 17.2 years, 1115 visits, last login: 6.8 years ago updated 7.2 years ago
Downtown Oakland/Lake Merritt. Ditched ATT for Sonic. Was consistently getting 16 down and 1.5 up without problems. Sorry I switched. Using the same copper pair now I get 5/6 down and .4/.6 up with regular problems. Everything else about Sonic is great. But am now a gamer who can't game, a few months into a contract. member for 7.8 years, driveby review (so far) updated 7.8 years ago
My DSL is not fast enough for Youtube videos; they constantly stall. Web pages freeze for a minute or more while content downloads. My best ever DSL download speed is 1.5 and that's not consistent. Tech support? It's theoretically possible. If you are willing to wait almost a full hour. I've been with Sonic for about 7 years, and the company has changed a lot in that time. Long time ago telephone support was easy and fast at Sonic. Competent support staff would take care of most any issue within minutes. Not any more. Nowadays you'll have to wait between a half hour and an hour to get phone support. Not fun holding a phone to your ear for an hour waiting for promised services. Moving on to Sonic web pages, try finding a clear one page statement of products and services. Not there! Instead you will have to swim through fluff, thick advertisements, and slick videos. Everything is buried in links, not plainly visible. Reminds me of AT&T web pages. You can eventually get information about services, but you'll have to disclose personal information. Yet another barrier to transparency. Seems to me that Sonic is becoming more like AT&T: An uncaring corporate cash cow that does not want contact with you. member for 8.4 years, 28 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago lodged 8.4 years ago
Family IT guy here, set up and paid for this SONIC.NET account for the Head of my family who resides in San Diego, CA. The service went on for two (2) years and my family mentioned only some slow speeds with two users online. The time to end my paying for the service had arrived and I had paid for service through 09-01-2014. I contacted Billing to request that at the END of the service month again, paid for in advance, I wanted the service disconnected. The request was "noted" and one day latter, 08-08-2014 the service was abruptly disconnected. When I called Billing to ask what had gone wrong I was told "sorry" it was a mistake and that it would take up to seven days to CORRECT their error , (reconnect service). I have to scramble to get another company to take their place, causing me to look really bad because they also use the line for VOIP! UNFORGIVABLE ERROR! Month to month, $29.95 1500/384 ztel (?) modem member for 17.2 years, 6 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago updated 9.6 years ago
This is a local ISP offering a wide variety of features for both everyday and power users. Online support has been fast and knowledgeable. Their Fusion product provides ADSL2+, static IP address options, e-mail hosting, web hosting, and plain telephone service. The telephone service has free national calls and free international calls to selected countries. The sound quality can't be beat. Call forwarding, voicemail to IMAP, caller ID, and call blocking are supported. Sonic.net's phone service is unfortunately an illegal telemarketing magnet. Expect a phone call every morning at 9:30 and a few more until night. Sonic.net claims to have "Spam Call Blocking" but it has been completely ineffective ever since telemarketers started using random local numbers as their Caller ID. I get more telemarketers on Sonic.net in a DAY than other phone providers get in a YEAR. Support claims they can do nothing to trace or block the calls. ADSL2+ is delivered at whatever your AT&T wires can handle with about a 6dB SNR margin. That can be anything from near-zero to 20Mbps. There's an option to bond two Fusion lines together to double your bandwidth. Other than that, neighborhoods with old AT&T wires are out of luck. Static IP addresses can be purchased and there's a way to switch Annex M on and off using your phone. My service is two bonded Fusion lines using Annex M. The combined modem bitrate is a very consistent 8/2 Mbps delivering 7/1.6 Mbps actual. That's usually too low for video-on-demand at high quality. When asked about upgrade options, Sonic could only offer 5/5 Mbps for $599/month on their FlexLink Ethernet plan. I hope to get bandwidth elsewhere but keep one Fusion line for phone calls. Warning! New Fusion customers must pay a $6.50/month modem rental fee. Only older customers can opt-out. member for 17.9 years, 940 visits, last login: 355 days ago updated 9.7 years ago
I have had Sonic for about 5 years at this point. Why am I writing a review now? Mainly because I think I'm starting to be affected by the growing pains of this otherwise excellent company. I love Sonic's ethics, love that they are in the area and tech support is always available and willing to spend as much time on the phone with you as you are with them. Sonic's prices are reasonable, especially when you get their FUSION service which gives you a POTS line and free calls and I was able to cancel my $40+/month AT&T land lines. Sonic's phone service is not IP telephony as far as I can tell, it's a real dial tone with no bandwidth issues like you would experience with Vonage or the others, no special equipment required and no call charges. If the world were a perfect place this fine relationship would go on for ever and we would ride off into the sunset together but life is not like that. First the stats. Sonic's FUSION service is advertised at $39 per month for a 20Mbps down, 1Mbps upload that can be configured to 2.5Mbps upload service that includes the aforementioned POTS service with no calling charges. These bandwidth figures are dependent on your distance from the CO. I can't tell you my exact distance from my CO but I would guess it to be a little over a mile according to DSL Reports CO locator: »/coinfo. My DSL Reports test history has shown that I never get more than 9.5Mbps down and 9.8Kbps up. Sonic until recently had my line capped at 14.9Mbps down and 1.2Mbps up, the speed at my end is obviously slower and I know there are anomalies in testing, this however is not my main problem with Sonic even though these speeds are easily eclipsed by Cable (Comcast). My problem comes with an almost daily bout with losing sync and modem reboot. This issue has been going on for years. Sometimes it goes away for moths at a time. Sometimes it happens five or six times a day. Recently it has gotten worse. Sonic and I have tried all the level-1 fixes; filter replacements, modem replacements, handset removal, RH-11 replacement. All of these fixes have been tried multiple times. My modem has been replaced three times, twice at my expense buying modems other than what Sonic was offering @$50 and then the last time out of desperation I paid the $50 and purchased one of their ZTE 831 modems. Problem went away for three months and now it's back. I'll add that I live in a multi-unit Loft building in Oakland that was converted from a warehouse to living space in 1994. I have lots of phone jacks around my space and I'm willing to accept that the problem could exist in the inside wiring and that will be my problem to fix. In the past AT&T has been called by Sonic to check their lines, their report came back with no problems but who knows if they ever even came here? I was never contacted and I have one of the only two keys to get in our phone room so I would know if they came out and actually looked at the wiring from the street into the phone room. So what's my problem? My problem is that we (Sonic and I) have never been able to pin down this problem and I never seem to be able to move beyond level-1 tech support, assuming there is something higher. Recently I've noticed a lack of candor that I've come to expect with Sonic. Sonic is growing and it seems to me that maybe their marketing department has gotten it's hands into the tech support process. Sonic Techs will still talk to you all day if you want but the the tech support folks seem guarded in what they will say. I was on the phone with them today for over an hour and I found myself having to really talk around certain key words and concepts to get close to some kind of answer, very frustrating. And after that hour where are we? Back at sending me a new modem (no charge this time) to see if we can isolate the problem. This means that I will have to put this modem in and wait to see if anything happens. At the same time they have capped my speed down so it'll be harder to tell which thing fixes the problem, if at all. This must all be done before they will send anyone out which I can understand because of the expense of sending someone from Santa Rosa to Oakland to check things out, but Sonic, as a long time customer I expect a bit better treatment. Maybe I'm being unrealistic? So more weeks of tinkering around before we get near anything like a solution. My suggestion to anyone who is thinking of DSL with Sonic, they are good, they available and they really seem to want to help but if you are not in a new building, are a good distance away from your CO or have limited patience for level-1 tech support flow charts, you might want to consider your options. It pains me to say that because the alternatives are bleak, mostly Comcast which some folks love, that is as long as you don't have to interact with Comcast and your speeds are good and you have a stable connection and they are not capping your downloads or giving your info to the government at every opportunity then life is good, yes? So Sonic, all I want is a straight answer and something better than level-1 support and I don't feel I'm getting it and that sucks and you need to consider how you are handling your growth and your long time customers. I'm not hinting at any conspiracy here, just a lack of coordination and/or motivation. If Sonic and I should be able to solve this problem, or not, I'll update this post. And with that there goes my modem losing sync again and rebooting. . My Sonic cost breakdown: DNS XXXXX.net 1.95 No Invoices to Primary Email 0.00 Fusion Broadband - Single Line - 39.95 Fusion Broadband Information - 0.00 Data $19.97 Voice $19.98 Voice Federal Subscriber Line Charge Fee 6.50 Voice Federal Universal Service Fund Fee 2.38 Voice California Lifeline Telephone Service 0.15 Surcharge Voice California Deaf and Disabled Telecom 0.03 Program Surcharge Voice California High Cost Fund-B Surcharge 0.04 Voice California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge 0.01 Voice California Advanced Services Fund 0.02 Surcharge Voice California 911 Emergency Surcharge 0.06 Voice Oakland Utility Users Tax 1.99 Fusion Phone Service - 510-XXX-XXXX 0.00 Voice California Public Utility Commission 0.02 User Fee Voice FCC Interstate Telecom Service 0.05 Provider Fee Voice FCC Telecommunications Relay Service 0.14 Fund All that and no desert. member for 18.7 years, 181 visits, last login: 241 days ago updated 10.8 years ago
|