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Review by tantivy 
UPDATED: 119 days ago
member for 2.7 years, 320 visits, last login: 59 days ago
 Palo Alto,Santa Clara,CA
 Contract price not specified.
 AT&T
 "reliable. knowledgable."
 "i doubt you can find better in norcal"
| Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
What can I say... Sonic simply works.
We have had Sonic at home for the last 5 years, and also at a local non-profit that I work with. Both are fed out of the same CO, and the non-profit is literally a block away from the CO.
Both circuits have been very reliable, with maybe one outage a year, if that..
If I have to call, the wait time is generally measured in seconds, or a few minutes at most, and then you get to talk to a human, in your time zone, who actually knows the difference between Windoze and Unix. No script, we just do the techie handshake, and cut to the chase.
When my brother and I decided to rent a house together, he brought the DSL service (and the DSL bridge) with him.
When I first set up the DSL bridge at home, I had to go in and reconfigure it, since it was an
older Alcatel Speed Touch Home, which had originally been provisioned on a older circuit, before PacBell changed their PVC settings. I had the manual, just not the correct PVC settings. Once I had reconfigured it, it worked fine (and continues to do so).
This particular bridge has gone through at least 2 ISP's, having been installed originally on a scruz.net circuit, before they got bought out, and left the residential DSL business.
The circuit at the non-profit is equally reliable.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of SONIC.NET |
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Review by mediahound
UPDATED: 121 days ago
member for 1.7 years, 53 visits, last login: 10 days ago
Richmond,Contra Costa,CA
$30 per month (12 month contract)
"Probably better than AT&T"
 "Customer/tech support can be not very good"
"They are about equal to other DSL providers"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
|
Sonic's customer support is horribly lacking. They are not really that helpful and talk down to customers. Every time I call their tech support I get a bad vibe. Case in point, the last time I phoned was because my DSL service was out. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with some inept so-called technician who had me unplug eveything, restart several times, even suggested that I re-install my entire OS. Turns out there was an area wide outage. Why wasn't this tech. informed of this fact right away?
UPDATE - I'm confused by their billing policies. My contract was up in July and at that time I called and spoke to someone who said that Sonic.net is not longer doing contracts, just month to month. I said fine.
Now today, several months later, I called to see about downgrading my service and am being told that there is a $50. charge to downgrade it. If I'm month to month, it seems illegal to charge me a fee to downgrade service since I'm not under a contract.
Sonic.net's horrible billing practices really lead me to start looking elsewhere now.
UPDATE - I have now closed my Sonic account and gone to Comcast. It's waaay faster (30 Mbps!) than what Sonic can provide me. I am very happy with the speed on Comcast for the price.
UPDATE (7/1/09): I canceled a re-connection with Sonic and they charged me for the DSL Modem (which they did not ship out because I canceled the order) as well as $18.95 even though the connection order was canceled before it was even connected. I was told by their Sales department that I would not be charged anything since I canceled the order in time, and that she was able to grab the modem so that it wouldn't ship out to me.
Now several days later, Sonic customer support is saying I need to return the DSL modem in order to receive my money back. Hmm... I can't return something that was not even sent out to me. Look at the UPS tracking, no DSL modem was sent nor delivered to me (tracking# 1Z60Y81A0397524578).
Sonic's customer support remains horribly inept.
UPDATE 7/29/09 - Sonic.net is still charging my credit card for service that I do not even have. Their customer service replies are predictably-completely inept. They have been unable to tell me why they are charging me for service they never even hooked up!
Followup comments:  
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Good question! This is a real good question. IM or email me your username and I'll review the call notes from that dialog and see what we can do to improve.
-Dane | |
| | mediahound
join:2008-02-19
Richmond, CA | Re: Good question! I won't be doing that because I know you just want to notate my account that I left a bad review. | |
| | | xan_user
join:2004-11-18
Windsor, CA
| Re: Good question! How can they improve if you won't let them? Its not like they're going to throttle you cause your review was less than perfect.
As a long time Sonic customer I implore you to help all us customers by letting Sonic address your issue, that way we can all benefit from even better customer service.
9 times out of 10 Sonic CS has gone above and beyond for me. The other one time it was just above....  | |
| | | | 
Laurenstuff
@covad.net | I think sonic is pretty intelligent about trouble shooting More intelligent than AT and T, that's for sure. I find them to be extremely helpful, and even give me credit for lost time sometimes. Five stars for them, for sure. | |
|
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Downgrade fee We buy wholesale loops from AT&T, and they charge us a $50 fee to downgrade - so we must pass that on. The way around it is to disconnect and then reconnect, but that's really inconvenient for you and for us. FYI.
-Dane | |
| 
wa2ibm
Premium
join:2000-10-10
San Jose, CA
| You've come back! So, you see one of the many reasons I continue using Sonic (reliability).
I too have Comcast HSI in addition to my Sonic connection. I have a multi-WAN router that allows me to use both at the same time. Since Sonic allows servers, all my inbound traffic (mail and web) comes in that path, while I use the Comcast connection for my VPN's (to keep that traffic from interfering with my web users). My outbound requests (mostly web) goes out either connection, depending on the phase of the moon. That confuses some web sites (mostly banking), but I've worked around that.
Bottom line: I'm sticking with Sonic, I'm just disappointed that I'll never see their Fusion Broadband product here in San Jose. | |
| |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! Don't write off Fusion - I'd really like to see many more Bay Area COs built.
That said, if you're more than a couple miles from your CO, we don't have an RT solution in the pipeline just yet.
-Dane | |
| | |
wa2ibm
Premium
join:2000-10-10
San Jose, CA
| Re: You've come back! I'll be waiting quite a while. My location is much too far from the Almaden CO. My first non-dialup connection was circa 2001 via IDSL (remember NorthPoint/PSN/Telocity/DirectvDSL?). My Sonic ADSL is via one of the Almaden RT's. There's a new AT&T VRAD just down the street, but that's off limits for you. 
Bill | |
| | | |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! Yup - no UVerse wholesale, at least for now. I suspect that FIOS going wholesale might help with that, but who knows.
We are working toward RT deployments, but it'll be a while before we get all the issues solved.
-Dane | |
| | | | |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs:
| Re: You've come back! Keep us in mind for the future, we are building ADSL2+ (our Fusion product) into the Richmond CO, so if you are close enough, those products are coming.
Shortly we are introducing Annex M (higher upstream) and pair bonding (doubles speed) on this product set.
Richmond is in process now, about five and a half months ETA. Perhaps we can earn better scores from you someday if/when we can deliver that product for you.
-Dane | |
| | | | | | | | |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! If you'll IM or email me an address, I can send you loop details.
Fusion is CO based - we don't have RTs yet, so that is a limiting factor. However, with products in the pipeline at up to 30Mbps/5Mbps, it's exciting stuff.
-Dane | |
| | | | | | |
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs: | Re: You've come back! You were not charged for the modem, sorry for any confusion.
-Dane | |
| | | | | mediahound
join:2008-02-19
Richmond, CA | Re: You've come back! A month later, you charged my credit card for service again; service that was never connected and that I do not have. You have got the worst billing practices I've seen and your customer service is lacking in every respect! | |
| | | | | | 
Snypes
join:2003-12-29
Santa Rosa, CA
| Re: You've come back! Hello, I feel for you. There is the occasion with DSL customers where things just don't work out. However your statement regarding charges is somewhat concerning. If you could send me your login name I will be happy to look into this with our billing group and see what needs to be done to straighten this out. I assure you this will not in any way reflect poorly on yourself. I have worked for this company for a long time and our practice has never been to drag an ex-customer through the mud but more to help them with their transition so they hold us in a better light in case the future brings them back our way. I am of course sorry things did not work out but I am willing to help untangle the issue so you can move on.
Thanks! | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
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 Review by highhatsize
UPDATED: 137 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 1468 visits, last login: 31 days ago
San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
$35 per month (month by month)
 about 4 days
AT&T
"Great technical support"
"Not free. (Power to the People!)"
"Great company. They can't help having to deal with AT&T"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
[UPDATE (SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2008):
Performance still peerless. Dane explained to me that SONIC does its own wire length tests rather than rely on AT&T so I guess that I am doomed to a 3M downspeed cap for as long as I use DSL. My speed tests to Megapath return a uniform 2550/435. That's nothing to shake a stick at and the speeds are even marginally increasing over time. For some reason, my yahoo email doesn't download graphics and Dane offered to troubleshoot this for me. I do appreciate the offer, but I'm not interested enough to spend the time. Last week I thought that I had lost my internet connection for the first time. However, it turned out that I had accidentally turned off the wireless modem in my computer.
I did get nailed with a price increase to $30, six months after signing up on a "no contract" basis, so that was a mistake.
No complaints. My modem seems to be the same one that AT&T Yahoo supplied to me when I had them as my IP. However, SONIC warrants it for 2 years rather than 1, (which is AT&T Yahoo's limit), so if it dies at the same time that the AT&T Yahoo one did I should be covered.]
I forget how many ISP's I have had now, probably ten or twelve. I relocated from the East Coast. This is the best one for service. Optimum had the best speed, but this has the best service. It is also, currently, the best value in San Francisco, (DSL Extreme may equal it. I don't know), because it gives you a free modem with a TWO year warranty as opposed to AT&T Yahoo's ONE year, and speeds at the same price as AT&T Yahoo. Moreover, it DOES NOT require an annual contract!
That being said, I think its attitude towards AT&T is too laid-back. If AT&T tells them that a connection is two miles from the CO, (as they did with me), they accept it. Since I previously had AT&T Yahoo from this address and was told by them that I was within a mile from the CO, someone is telling porkies. Or . . . perhaps there are two lines to the CO from this address and AT&T is keeping the short ones for their own customers? (They wouldn't do that, would they?) AT&T also kept me waiting an extra five days for a provisioning point at the local CO despite the fact that I had just freed up one by terminating THEIR dsl service.
I only wanted the 3M tier, so it doesn't bother me, but I think that SONIC and other independent isps should request oversight of CO circuits owned by the competing telco.
Of course, that may be pie-in-the-sky since I have read that the telco's obligation to provide circuits to independent isps will end next year.
SONIC's techs are very knowledgeable, very quick, and very INTELLIGIBLE, (a concern for those of us who have trouble understanding English as spoken in Mumbai). I hope the company sticks around.
[UPDATE, JUNE 12, 2009]
Don't know what happened with the telco wiring, but SONIC found me to be within the distance to qualify for 6M down service, (after finding me outside of that zone earlier), so I signed up. It's only $5 more to double my download speed so a true no-brainer.
My speed is around 5100/655 so I am well satisfied.
Smooth sailing.
[UPDATE: July 13. 2009:
Another one of those niggling billing problems of which SONIC.net seems unable to rid itself. I signed up for my own website for free over a year ago. When I saw that I had been charged $10 for it after the introductory free year, (I think that that was the reason I was charged),I called SONIC.net and canceled it. The charge was never deducted and I subsequently learned that by the time the charge appears on your bill it is too late to deduct it. Why not bill us for it a month in advance so that we can cancel before the telco bills SONIC?
Followup comments:
DaneJasper
Sonic.Net
Premium,VIP
join:2001-08-20
Santa Rosa, CA
clubs:
| Sonic.net DSL quote:
Of course, that may be pie-in-the-sky since I have read that the telco's obligation to provide circuits to independent isps will end next year.
Thanks for your comments, we appreciate you taking the time to write. I'll chat with our team about your particular loop length if you'll IM or email me (dane@sonic.net) your Sonic.net username.
Regarding AT&T's obligation to offer ADSL circuits to ISPs, it appears that we'll be able to continue to load new circuits through mid 2010. After that point, they could bar new circuits, though in-service customers are not going to be affected.
Meanwhile, we've formed a CLEC and are working to deploy our own DSLAMs. The availability of copper itself will extend into the foreseeable future.
-Dane | |
| ewschulz
join:2008-04-24
San Pablo, CA
|  connection distance
I just wasted time with ATT trying to get my connection distance, only to be told that it proprietary information. The only thing I could find out is that I am on a remote hub and not the central office.
My point is that Sonic can not get that information if I can not!! | |
| | | |
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 Review by bobrk
UPDATED: 165 days ago
member for 9.8 years, 3806 visits, last login: a few hours ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$85 per month
about 8 days
AT&T
"great support, good newsgroups, instant setup"
"only a little pricey"
"as good as the reviews say"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
After years hearing about sonic net on ba.internet, I finally had the chance to give them a try. I was with DIRECTV DSL when they went out of business, so I ordered sonic.net on my other line. I tend to judge isp's on how easy it is to hook up on line, and within just a few moments, I had a username and a basic internet account on line. The DSL installation went smoothly as well, with a clear email telling me what was going to happen, when to expect the installer and when to expect the equipment.
The Broadmax modem came, I plugged it in, and I didn't see a sync light. It blinked a couple of times, but that was just the setup. When my supposed hookup day arrived, I went ahead and switched my router over from the DTV modem on the second line, to the new modem. Sure enough, I had traffic, and yet the sync light was not on. WAN and LAN told me that everything was ok.
I didn't know if the sync light was supposed to be on, and the modem was working fine, so I bounced this off the sonic.dsl newsgroup (one of many that are hosted there) and Dane suggested that I contact support. If you become a sonic.net customer, you will get to know Dane. He probably interacts personally with every customer. The support people offered to trade modems, to see if the modem itself was defective, and I'm now awaiting the new modem.
My only beef with the service right now is I'm getting slightly less on download then I was getting with DTV. It's countered by slightly higher upload speeds and a low 20ms ping.
I'll update this review when the modem situation is solved.
12/30/02 update
I got the new modem and it acted just like the old one. I got a sync light, though, but I had to unplug all my phones to get it to come on. Plugging them all back in did not cancel the light, so i guess it does have something to do with all the filters. In any case, the speed is adequate, and the support great. I haven't phoned them at all, but they've followed up every email inquiry and even checked up on my situation several times.
8/5/03 update
sonic.net rocks. There are simply no problems. My modem always syncs now, the speed is decent, certainly what I paid for, although I think I can get it higher by installing a point-of-entry pots device, but I haven't made the time for that yet. The email is great, with built in spam controls, which are easy to configure, and there are 3 news servers available. When there are problems with the ISP, notices are sent out via email and newsgroups as well as being posted on the web page.
2/21/04 update
Just received the 6000/608 upgrade service offered by Sonic, and it rocks. There were some problems with people that were on RTs, as I found out I was, with ratecaps being needed in the Redback routers to limit the amount of speed. This keeps the downloads and uploads very stable and gives the user the full experience of what can only be described as AWESOME INTERNET! I'm extremely happy with Sonic and would recommend it to anybody!
6/16/04
Just added web hosting to my account. This involved moving my domain name from my last ISP, repointing MX records and signing up for the new service. All were accomplished using automated tools, and everything went quite smoothly. The web hosting is a little pricey at $20/mo, but I like having everything in the same place. Basic Hosting also includes 24 email aliases and 100MB of storage.
12/22/04
Well, it's been nearly two years since I signed up for Sonic, and I still can't believe how good the service is. You can read about most of it above, but I think the thing that really needs to be emphasized is the great customer service. From diagnosing a bad card in an R/T and rolling the SBC truck to fix it to telling me to reboot my modem in a nice way when my dsl dies, it's really a company that is a pleasure to deal with.
9/14/05
I decided to downgrade my service to save money. I'm now on the Pro DSL service. Solid 3Mbps service down and a lot less money.
1/18/06
I moved. Sonic moved with me. Was pretty painless once I understood the system, and as always, the DSL synced before the due date.
7/19/06
Still great. The network seems to just get better and better, and the attention to detail and service levels is astounding. I would recommend this company to anyone unequivocally.
2/7/07
Just upgraded my speed. Took less than a week to do and the only hitch was they didn't tell me to reboot my modem, which would have been nice. Until I rebooted it, the speeds were funky, but afterwards they're great. They offered to send me a loaner Zoom modem to trouble shoot, with an option of upgrading to it for $50. I'm currently evaluating the modem to see if it's any better than the Broadmax they sent me back in '02.
2/13/07
In one week, I had to reboot the modem twice. I went back to my good ol' Broadmax and everything is back to speediness.
6/1/07
Well, it turned out that the modem was probably dying. After another month or two, the modem started dropping packets and losing sync all the time. I thought it was either the line or the internal network, but both of those checked out fine.
I asked for another loaner Zoom, which arrived earlier this evening. After a few hours, it seems to be working great. We'll give it a few more days, but I think it's going to work just fine.
6/6/07
Indeed, the connection is rock solid once again, and the speed is insane. I should have gotten a new modem right when this first started.
Anyway, much has been made of the fact that Sonic uses AT&T DSL to get the job done and that AT&T gives Sonic the run around. Well, I just have to say that it really isn't true in my case. I had an earlier incident right after Sonic started selling the 6MB service, and Sonic was able to get (then SBC) AT&T people out to check out the situation, where they did a very professional job of analysis. In this most recent case, the AT&T guy did a great job once again, and even asked me where I got my NID POTS DSL splitter--he'd never seen one like that before.
So I feel that the idea of AT&T giving Sonic the runaround is a myth.
12/6/07
Time for the 6 month checkup. I still have the high speed account. I still have dynamic IP, although it pretty much never changes.
I also signed up for the Meraki WiFi access point. They send you a tiny WAP, and an ethernet switch, and you plug it all together and if somebody uses it, either a freebie user or a Sonic customer, you get a kickback. No one's used mine yet, but hey, I'm giving it a shot.
The spam filters are pretty much perfect. I have to go save an email about once a month or less from the grey mail system, but other than that, it stops anywhere from 5 to 30 emails a day.
The network rocks. Super solid, and ping to first hop has been 8ms pretty constantly. Network issues are dealt with quickly and you always know what's happening there with an MOTD mailed to you whenever they come out.
So after all these years, I'd still recommend Sonic.
6/11/08
Not a lot new to report. My Meraki doesn't get much use from outside folks. I have a plan to reposition it, but I haven't done that yet. The Zoom modem is still working great.
I've begun using some of the other features of my account, using 4 real mailboxes, 4 mailing lists and 20 domain email addresses. It usually just takes moments to set something new up.
The spam filters catch between 5 and 20 emails a day, with only one or two hitting my mailboxes.
Otherwise, service is rock solid, with published service levels always achieved.
12/12/08
Same old, same old. I was just looking at my monitors here at DSLReports, and they are delightfully boring. The Zoom modem they setn me has been flawless with no rebooting needed at any time. The spam filtering on email is nearly perfect, maybe 1 or 2 spams get to my mailbox a week. People use my sonic hosted website as a test of their networks, since it's always up.
I would recommend Sonic to anyone in their service area.
6/15/09
Service is so good that it is almost completely out of sight, out of mind. Even BT and Netflix traffic do not perturb its perfection.
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Review by cjzhang
Posted: 210 days ago
member for 210 days, 0 visits, last login: 210 days ago
Berkeley,Alameda,CA
$29 per month (11 month contract)
about 9 days
AT&T
"good connection, great customer service, great tech support, USENET!"
"AT&T landline is lame"
"They're awesome, and definitely worth it"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I just cancelled my service with them because I'm moving out of my apartment, but these guys are great, and I made an account just to sing their praises, I'm that happy with the treatment/service I got. Cancellation took no more than a couple minutes, with no hassling or upselling or ridiculous wait times.
I was referred to them from a friend, and haven't regretted it once. It took a few extra days to get the AT&T landline set up, and that was kind of annoying, but it wasn't SonicNet's fault, so I'm fine with it. And then UPS took forever to get the modem to me, because the truck kept coming when I was out, but that was more UPS being lame than anything else.
I bought the 3mbps down option, and with the introductory discount, it was 30 dollars a month, which is a bit pricy, but not unreasonable, and I didn't exactly find any cheaper alternatives for the same rate, so it's fair enough.
Most services don't offer Usenet, but SonicNet offers 14 or 20 day (I don't remember) Usenet retention of all newsgroups (all the ones I tried, at least), which is awesome and something I don't think most ISPs offer. I also got the modem for free after rebate. I actually didn't know where to find the rebate form for the modem, but they had some online support guys to talk to in real-time, and they found it for me in only a couple minutes.
So yeah, that was my experience. These guys are great, they offer some cool stuff (a shell! usenet!) that other ISPs don't, and their support staff is awesome. The only bad part, really, is that you're required to have an AT&T landline, something that I didn't use once because I had a cell phone, and it was kind of annoying to have to set up and then (later) cancel. If you already HAVE an AT&T landline, though, they'd be perfect for you.
Also they're a local company instead of a gigantic corporate machine, if you care about that sort of thing.
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Review by zfranklin
Posted: 210 days ago
member for 210 days, 1 visits, last login: 210 days ago
Berkeley,Alameda,CA
$29 per month (12 month contract)
"Fast, super reliable service, fantastic folks, ethical company"
"None"
"Nothing but good things to say about Sonic.net"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Great service, great support, great people. Dealt with them for my home and my work and have had great experiences every time. Plus I get to avoid giving my money to AT&T. Yay for Sonic.net!
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Review by EvanWilliams
Posted: 211 days ago
member for 3.9 years, 114 visits, last login: 191 days ago
Sacramento,Sacramento,CA
$29 per month (month by month)
about 2 days
AT&T
"Excellent customer service, competitive prices (with contract discounts)."
"None."
"If you have AT&T phone service but don't feel like giving more $ to a mega company, go with Sonic.net."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I considered AT&T for DSL service but had been screwed by them on my cell phone and did/do not want to give them any more of my business ever. I found Sonic.net had some good reviews here and that they're a more local company, so I thought I'd give them a chance and am very glad I did.
I have their Pro Residential DSL service (rated at 1.5-3mbps down / 384-512 up) and am getting 2500 down and ~400 up--which is good.
The order/install is about as easy as any other DSL install--put filters on your phones and plug and play the rest. They use DHCP so there is no PPPoE config to worry about.
The modem I received was a Zoom DSL modem (model 5615) and it was free with a 1 year contract discount ($50 value).
I've had two problems in the 3 years of using this provider. One was related to the very old phone lines running to my apartment (which AT&T fixed after being diagnosed by Sonic) and the other was related to the SPI firewall on my router which was causing all sorts of dropped packets. Both of these issues were solved with the help of the Sonic support staff and they are very competent and actually nice to talk to.
I would recommend this DSL provider to any friend looking for service in the Northern California area.
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Review by bgibbons
UPDATED: 237 days ago
member for 300 days, 3 visits, last login: 237 days ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
"Responsive tech support"
"Not directly responsible for the line"
"Beware of resellers"
| |
Update: Sonic.net kept their records about the actual distance to the CO determined at installation (11000 feet) vs the distance in the AT&T records (17000 feet; AT&T is confused about the address). So Sonic.net finally agreed to escalate the issue with AT&T. I'm not holding my breath, but I will be impressed if they actually get AT&T to budge. I assume the formal CPUC complaint will at least add to the count of complaints about AT&T.
--
When the physical phone line is good, Sonic.net is fine. But they have no leverage with AT&T, or they choose not to push on them.
I had very good service (considering the distance) for several years. Then AT&T swapped my physical line for another, much lower-quality line. Sonic.net was able to get AT&T to remove the bridge tap that was present on the new line, but was not able to get AT&T to switch the line back nor give me another high-quality line. The current line is not acceptable, to the point where I will be filing a complaint with the PUC. I may consider legal action.
The line swap was not Sonic.net's fault, but they have much better contacts within AT&T and yet would not go beyond asking for line check. AT&T agrees that it is a low-quality line but is unwilling to fix it. Sonic.net is unwilling to help, other than offering to downgrade my service by two levels.
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Review by rbedard
UPDATED: 261 days ago
member for 2.4 years, 117 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Scotts Valley,Santa Cruz,CA
$49 per month
about 10 days
AT&T
"Diligence, courtesy, competence"
"Depends on ATT infrastructure and provisioning"
"Glad I went with Sonic"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I was previously an MCI local and long distance customer (because of poor customer service by SBC); I had to go back to SBC/ATT in order to get DSL. A week after ordering ATT phone service, my line went dead after 17 years of uninterrupted service at this address. This had nothing to do with Sonic, but that is why it took ten days to get the service up fully. Sonic kept poking and prodding ATT, and it was no doubt due to their perseverance that I was finally provisioned with my full line speed ten days after placing my order. I am pretty sure that if it wasn't for Broadband Reports and Sonic, I would still be limping along at a provisioned 384Kbps cap.
Regarding the rating for "Co-ordination" ... it takes two to tango. While I was not happy about the apparent lack of coordination, I strongly believe that Sonic was doing their best, and the other party was at fault. I therefore gave Sonic 100% for coordination. I do not think it would be fair to do less.
I cannot say enough nice things about the folks at Sonic.net. They exceeded my expectations, and I am delighted with the service. Granted, it has only been one day that I have had fully operational service, but I can tell that they have the right stuff. An ATT tech told me that with my 19000 feet of wire between the CO and my home, ATT would probably not even offer me DSL, and it was a "good thing" I went with a third party DSL provider. He also said they would probably provision me at 768Kbps, but Sonic got them on the phone and within a couple hours, I was fully provisioned at 1.5Mbps.
I went with Sonic because: 1) they had great reviews here; 2) they had the most attractive pricing and a number of packages that meant I was paying only for the level of service I would receive; 3) they were not ATT; 4) alternatives were much more $$$ with no additional benefit.
I originally ordered 3.0Mbps/512Kbps service (at $22.95/mo for 12 months), but Sonic contacted me early on and said that I would not be able to get that level of service at my location. They downgraded me to the 1.5/384 package that I have now, ($17.95/mo for 12 months.) This was the first thing they did right. I am quite sure there are others that would have been happy to charge for service I was not receiving, and then get into the point-blame game while collecting my money.
In my opinion, EVERYTHING that was less than satisfactory with the process was due to ATT; Sonic got involved, and advocated for me with ATT, and I ended up with what I wanted. If I had been an ATT customer already, I am also quite sure this process would have been a lot easier. (Get your POTS straightened out before ordering DSL. I ordered my Telco switchover and DSL on the same day.)
I am extremely happy with Sonic so far, and I am going to recommend them to other family members that are ready to go with DSL service.
[3-11-09 Update] Still a sonic.net customer, although the sweetheart pricing has run out and I am now paying $50/mo (no contract) for 1.5Mb DSL, which is not a very good price. And I am still stuck with ATT, who recently took a week to restore my line after a bad cable failed. I am considering trying to renegotiate a new contract to see if I can get a better price.
DSL is my only option here, there is no cable near enough. Ironically, I live about half a mile as the crow flies from Seagate and Borland. ATT recently offered me 3Mb service for $30/mo. Tempting, but I doubt I would really see any increase in speed, and I would be dealing directly with ATT, which would not make me particularly happy given our history.
Sonic still gets high marks for reliable rock-solid service.
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Review by Ulmo
UPDATED: 264 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 396 visits, last login: 6 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$25 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
AT&T
"Worked with me to get max speed despite bad data in AT&T distance database; livable TOS and services"
"Interacting with support often requires patience (many weeks in many cases)"
"A solid ISP for more discriminating needs with consumer costs"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
Update on March 8, 2009:
Why BroadBandReports/DSLReports does not have a "Billing" category for rating, I do not know, since it is a major topic of ISPs and selection criteria for selecting one. I'll assume that of the ratings, billing affects the following: Services, Value for Money, Pre Sales Information, and Install Co-ordination. Until BroadBandReports fixes this, I can't rate billing directly.
Here is the post I made to ba.internet, and is a continued problem Sonic.net faces:
Sonic.net continues to have a corrupt attitude about billing.
I called them twice to discuss when and what the first billing for a
Business DSL advertised to cost $25 per month would be. Each time,
the hold was over five minutes, and one of the times, the hold was
over 15 minutes. I could not wait that long at that moment.
Now, finally, I find this charge on my PayPal account:
Debit Card Signature Purchase To SONIC.NET INC SANTA ROSA CA Mar. 5, 2009 Pending Details -$158.87 USD $0.00 USD
Hunting further, I find out this:
Sonic.net, Inc.
2260 Apollo Way
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
707.522.1000
support@sonic.net
For:
[...]
_______________________________________________________________________
Description Unit Price Total
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Credit Overpayment, 2008-10-27 1.88cr 1.88cr
Charge DSL - Prorated Basic Business 160.75 160.75
408XXXXXXX from 2009-02-25 to 2009-09-10
Total: 158.87
In other words, this is the third time Sonic.net has overcharged me by
more than fifty dollars without any notice whatsoever, and the second
time they did it for more than 100 dollars. This time, the charge is
going to go against an account that I have to wire money to, at a cost
to me of way over $60, and there is still the possibility it won't be
credited in time to stop this charge, possibly causing a long standing
checking account I have to go bad, and cause me way over $200 in extra
charges and fees.
Actually, I just thought of a way to get some money in my PayPal
account fast for about $10, but it will require me to go ask people
for $210 whom are already pissed off that I got angry about this
happening to me again and said "God Damnit" too loud for their
delicate ears, and I'm not even sure they have $210 to spare.
This is the sort of thing that makes people EXTREMELY mad at
Sonic.net's billing. Yet, every time we discuss these matters with
them, they continue to punt, saying that they don't understand what
the problem is.
I already knew Sonic.net does this, but that's why I called twice to
ask them how much they were going to charge. I made sure to put a big
buffer amount of money in my account so that this wouldn't be a
problem -- $70 at last look. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough.
Sonic.net continues to use corrupt dishonest billing practices. They
do not go by the old methods of contracts and agreements; instead,
they steal, and shrug their shoulders whenever they get called on it.
---
Literally ten minutes later, PayPal posts this information:
Mar. 5, 2009 Authorization To SONIC.NET INC SANTA ROSA CA Completed Details -$158.87 USD
Mar. 5, 2009 Temporary Hold Placed Details -$0.16 USD
Mar. 8, 2009 Temporary Hold Removed Details $0.16 USD
Mar. 8, 2009 Debit Card Backup Funding - Bank Bank Account xxxxxx Completed ... $158.71 USD
Mar. 8, 2009 Cash Back Bonus Completed Details $2.38 USD
Now, there is no way I can get the funds to the bank in time. The
balance in the bank account right now is $71.18 positive; when this
ACH transaction goes through, it will be overdrawn.
IF SONIC.NET HAD INFORMED ME OF THIS CHARGE BEFORE IT HAD ISSUED IT, I
COULD HAVE ARRANGED FOR FUNDS TO BE AVAILABLE, OR EVEN ARRANGED PROPER
TRANSFER. FURTHERMORE, I COULD HAVE PREVENTED NEGATIVE RATINGS ON MY
ACCOUNTS AND OVERAGE FEES. NONE OF THIS WAS AUTHORIZED BY ME FOR
SONIC.NET TO DO!!!
THIS IS THE ONLY INFORMATION I RECEIVED FROM SONIC.NET ABOUT THIS CHARGE:
Date: Thu, March 5, 2009 11:26
Automatic credit-card payment of your prepaid account service has been
processed, and your account had been credited. If you have any questions
regarding your bill or your internet service, please feel free to contact
us.
RECEIPT - THIS IS NOT A BILL
Sonic.net, Inc.
2260 Apollo Way
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
707.522.1000
support@sonic.net
For:
Brad Allen
_______________________________________________________________________
Description Unit Price Total
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Credit Overpayment, 2008-10-27 1.88cr 1.88cr
Charge DSL - Prorated Basic Business 160.75 160.75
408XXXXXXX from 2009-02-25 to 2009-09-10
Total: 158.87
As you can see, the email was Thursday, March 5, THE SAME DAY THE
CHARGE WAS PLACED. If I had happened to check my email once per day,
I could have caught this before today, and transfered enough funds in
my accounts. But I only get to all of my emails once per week or so;
I am a very busy person.
What I want to have is NOTICE THAT A CHARGE WILL HAPPEN BEFORE THEY
PLACE IT. This is something customers have demanded for a long time,
and yet nothing has come forth.
Comcast and AT&T do the same thing. So, I don't feel guilty about
staying with Sonic.net, and seeing them in small claims court for this
and the bank fees it costs me if that's what it takes, and continuing
to use their services if they can provide. They are becoming part of
the monopolies.
===========
I don't think anything has really changed about Sonic.net. This has always been their behavoir.
Sincerely,
Brad Allen
Originally written years ago:
When I first started looking for an ISP in and/or serving Aptos, I wanted one which had normal geek things like decent DNS servers and products, static IP#s, no port blocking, terms of service that let me use it for whatever came up, etc.. I soon found out that Sonic.net was the local big low cost provider that did all of those types of things, and ever since, it has lived up to its reputation in that regard, although with an ever so slightly lower than expected cost and ever so slightly lower than expected quality, well within my range of acceptability. I would definately recommend Sonic.net to anybody who wants a simple ISP to get who has those more discriminating needs like me.
In addition, Sonic.net is a decent broker for AT&T-ASI DSL services. They have a decent working relationship with AT&T-ASI, and you can order things via Sonic.net and have confidence that Sonic.net will manage the relationship with AT&T-ASI, so you don't have to. As long as you can communicate well enough with Sonic.net, everything should be resolved in a matter of time. It does often take persistence and weeks to muddle through some of the more quirky problems, such as manual loop qualifications needed for bad distance data in AT&T-ASI's line database, but Sonic.net will allow you to talk to human beings in the process, allowing a combination of email, telephone and live chat to do so. It is often necessary to contact Sonic.net's support people more than once for the same communication, since sometimes they get lost in the shuffle, but they will get to it if you are polite, patience and persistent. I check once per day and push it forward when I think it might be dropped, and it eventually gets resolved. This is great service for a consumer level product (I'd call it midrange consumer prices, but they do have low cost consumer and high cost business products, too).
I originally became a customer of Sonic.net in January of 2004, when DSL just became available where I was living. I ordered 1.5, but then found out I desired and had use for much more, and that the limit of distance for my situation allowed me to get 6 (6016kbps/608kbps DSL speed), so ordered that as an upgrade. The initial 1.5 took only a few days, and a few months later my 6 arrived, and Sonic.net even fixed a few ATM cell dropping bugs that when fixed gave their DSL customers 100% bandwidth utilization when using TCP over IP when congestion permitted (about 98% of the time at first). In later times, when congestion got more intense, they sort of waited for packets to start dropping while planning to do and did do major expensive upgrades until they were ready for many more years of ample capacity (slowdown congestion which seems to me to be far less than 1% of the time). Lately, they sport a nice 1 gigabit per second fiber ring of San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, then back to San Jose (last leg is backup) which hits their main datacenter in Santa Rosa and many POPs for their interconnections to everyone else (Internet backbones, DSL provider (AT&T-ASI), etc.).
Support often takes patience and persistence to get items resolved, but they are not intractable; they understand English, and will eventually look at your issue as human beings, and solve them when everything has been understood and diagnosed. They will do what is necessary to eventually solve just about any problem, although like I said patience is required (often many polite interactions back and forth for many weeks per issue). I moved and got their 6 DSL again, and then when I moved again I got that downgraded to 1.5, but then I decided I wanted 6 anyway later on when they got 768kbps DSL upload speed. Sonic.net has been proactive in bringing speed products to consumers that SBC/AT&T-ASI offers to Sonic.
The features Sonic.net brings that I make use of are varying levels of port blocking including none for static IP# customers, static IP# options (which I often get), and other things you often don't find other places (IPv6, Multicast, etc., delivered to your DSL). They used to have three news servers: Supernews (they still have that), Newscene (they no longer have that), and their own. They recently upgraded their own USENET "news" servers, but in a hurried untested fasion, which caused them to lose all of their own internal newsgroup history which until then they had years of and many hiccups along the way, but there were backups of other services during this period. Anyway, the features of the new (expensive) news server cluster are capacity, including speed and retention (full speed downloads on DSL lines, moderately long retention times). After some work, their news servers rival even the professional news server companies a bit above entry level (still some of the professionals have more retention and selection, but that can't be helped for a product Sonic.net includes in its midrange consumer ISP prices).
Sonic.net has been chasing extremely low cost consumer price DSL products. For those who wish to start with that, Sonic.net seems like a viable choice.
Lately, Sonic.net has been responding to making better terms for billing, realizing ISP service is something that ought to have a good warning before disconnection if you forget to pay. They also are designing a more logical accounting system which will display charges in a more understandable way (they asked for suggestions in the new design, and I think are designing it now). This is welcome, since until this recent attention in accounting, accounting interaction with their customers always seemed like an afterthought, which is OK for geeks who want more computer guts than wallet guts, but confusing when it came time to do financial stuff.
This is all I can remember in this sitting. I recommend Sonic.net to anyone who wants solid ISP service who does not need the branding of some other big company with their particular value added services; often, those value added services aren't that good or can be duplicated elsewhere, but that is research you will have to do since I haven't done it recently.
Sonic.net is starting to get bigger and meaner, but they haven't lost touch yet. I think they have many years to go with their current intertia, and their goals are to stay as good as they are and possibly become even better, so I have a feeling that when their fly wheel slows down they'll have more fly wheels at full power running and on the way.
UPDATES: No changes. They continue to work hard to be a good quality consumer ISP, and continue to have sucky accounting and billing practices, although one major improvement in the latter category is that they give a reasonable grace period. I still recommend them for most reasons except monetary. Do not expect reasonable monetary policy with your account at Sonic.net, but that they will work with you to try to get your service operating well.
I currently have two accounts with them, one which I wouldn't but I'm stuck in term. Therefore I'm not posting rates; one is top tier (6016kbps/768kbps -- Aptos) and one is bottom tier (768kbps/384kbps -- San Jose -- can't get any faster). My output on one = the input rate on the other (and often send large files just that way).
Update: Now only in San Jose:
In response to another reviewer who was quite mad about automatic unnotified prebilling and lack of contract and price communication, I wrote the following comment, and thought it was appropriate for my review since it has new information (not about the bad billing practices, but about the good experience with billing in doing something that other ISPs would never be able to do):
Those are their billing practices unfortunately; I've already lost one bank account due to them.
However, their madness is mostly (mostly) about charging you without notice and subterfuge of what charges there will be, not making up bogus charges. Talking with billing about issues not related to their bad points is rather pleasant when necessary, and they are often effective and good in that respect. I recently had two accounts with them, each with an attached DSL, and one contract was finished, so for financial reasons (certainly not preference) I had to cancel one DSL connection and one account. Unfortunately, the DSL connection I didn't need (even though I still wanted it) was connected to the account I needed to keep (lots of other services and files), so they nicely (only on the telephone though, no email allowed, but all in understandable native English without accent nor unduly repeating myself, without scripts, and with logic intact and a fairly decent IQ level) first turned off the unneeded DSL connection, then moved the DSL connection I needed to the account I needed to keep, then turned off the extra newly naked account. I had to call for steps 1 (disconnect unneeded DSL) and 3 (turn off naked unneeded account once DSL moved to account I'm keeping), but they were insistent that step 2 (move DSL connection from one account to other account) was in their process without my intervention, which was true. The whole process took about two to two and a half weeks (including about 10 days of waiting for no response for some emails and finally when I sent a repeat email they email replied telling me to do it on the telephone, so once I telephoned it took about a week and most of that was me just being patient and not pestering them), and they were very nice about it, and there were almost no complications or confusions. So, billing is good for many issues, but they definitely have a devil side. Billing is also the department that interfaces with AT&T for ordering your service, so it's best to understand that they handle the quality of your connection at at least one point, so don't get them overly mad at you.
Technical support is indeed better than other services (e.g., real native person advantage), and the services are generally not encumbered (which is the main reason I got and keep them).
I continue to recommend Sonic.net after cautioning anyone that they must be ready to deal with them as a whole (having baby boomer credit cards helps, so I am not lucky in that respect). Even though I read Verizon FiOS forum all the time wishing I would be able to get something like that, I dread having to deal with FiOS's bad sides (legal encumberments, seems like extra step to get static IP#, extra latency of MOCA connection vs. cat5 considerations, forced or not forced to use their router with its spying stuff in it, etc.). If I did have access to FiOS now, I am sure that not only would I get second to highest if not highest tier of FiOS (it's expensive!), that I'd also keep a Sonic.net basic account and perhaps more to keep many of the services I get from them.
I am very excited to see what their pilot for ADSL2 is going to reveal, but they haven't been very bullish about that, but they did jump through a bunch of hoops to do it (becoming a CLEC) so we know they are quite serious.
(next comment is a wish, not a gripe): Now, if only Sonic.net, Inc. would hire me, let me put on gloves and hard hat and vest, and I could start digging through public rights of ways, then I'd be installing fiber networks for them and we could have our own fiber deployment from a mostly fairly decent midsized ISP.
Gripe: they don't offer fiber at rates I can afford.
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