Sci/Tech Gigabit Internet for $70: the unlikely success of California's Sonic.net

[tom_mai78101]

SEBASTOPOL, CALIFORNIA—Two things set a one-block stretch of Florence Avenue apart from other American streets. One is the quirky metal sculptures planted in front of most homes; the other is the Internet traffic coursing through recently-strung fiber-optic cables on the block’s utility poles. They offer each house up to one gigabit per second in bandwidth, making this one of the fastest streets in America.

While some other cities can also brag about gigabit access, in this Sonoma County town it costs only $69.95 a month. The service comes courtesy of Sonic.net, the18-year-old Internet provider based in the neighboring city of Santa Rosa. And Sonic even throws in two phone lines with unlimited long-distance calling when you sign up.

Despite living on one of the best broadband streets in the country, almost none of the few dozen residents on Florence Avenue bother with the highest-end gigabit service, though. And why should they? Sonic's everyday 100 Mbps fiber offering costs just $39.95 a month, the same price Sonic used to charge for its 20 Mbps DSL connections (It includes unlimited phone, too.)

Compare Sonic’s 100 Mbps price to the two better-known area options for broadband—Comcast's Xfinity Extreme 105 Mbps service runs $199.95 a month, while AT&T's U-Verse tops out at 24 Mbps for $49.95.

Gigabit Internet for $70: the unlikely success of California's Sonic.net

In the late 1990s, small Internet providers flourished; most eventually died …

arstechnica.com

 

[SouLEDGE]

I'm crying on the inside here.
Where I stay I'm paying $46 a month for a 1 Mbps connection
with - and here's the worst part - a 1 gig cap

 

[Accname]

I'm crying on the inside here.
Where I stay I'm paying $46 a month for a 1 Mbps connection
with - and here's the worst part - a 1 gig cap

Internet is pretty good were i live, no cap, not too costly, but on the other hand its unreliable. Very often the connection is just gone for like 20 minutes. The cables are not very good or something, i dont know, but hey, its cheap.

 

[WildTurkey]

I pay $60 a month for 2 terrabite adsl 2+ in AUS. Problem is i share the exchange with the University of Queensland, so my internet is almost always slow... Over the uni holidays however i can get up to 3Mbps, during uni semesters it goes down to 300kbps... SOOO GAY

 

[Accname]

I pay $60 a month for 2 terrabite adsl 2+ in AUS. Problem is i share the exchange with the University of Queensland, so my internet is almost always slow... Over the uni holidays however i can get up to 3Mbps, during uni semesters it goes down to 300kbps... SOOO GAY

Our connection in the university is so fast that you usually download/upload things in an instant. Even data the size of gigabytes. At home i can onlydream of those things.
But many students go with the laptops/etc to university if they need to download a very big OS-update or similar big downloads.

 

[camelCase]

I was about to say that you might be DL/UL'ing to an internal server but then I took a big OS update to the rest of the paragraph.