4 ms·

Just wanted to chime in about how happy with their residential service in SF. I have their 1Gbps package. With Comcast, this would most often translate to a rea

• curt15 7y ago
  >With Comcast, this would most often translate to a real-life asymetric 250mbps download, 50mbps upload speed Don't forget the inevitable data cap!
• ribosometronome 7y ago
  Former Sonic customer here. I caved and moved to the South Bay after doing the commute for too long and Sonic is honestly what I miss most about the city.
  • scottlocklin 7y ago
    Same here. I can't imagine complaining about Sonic. If I had issues, I could call a freaking human in Mountain View (or whatever), and he'd fix it rather than asking me to cycle the power on my computer.
• justizin 7y ago
  additionally, because comcast and DSL providers are using existing wiring in what are often very old buildings that are difficult to rewire (at the building level moreso than the unit level), that stuff is often just going through mazes of wiring with tons of interference and really inconsistently performs. fiber is honestly just easier to pull through three stories of 100yo walls than coax, afaict, and it doesn't care if it runs next to power or other data as long as you don't break it. i wasn't able to get full gigabit when i lived in sf with sonic, but my latency and general reliability was WAY higher than even with comcast business.
• fletchowns 7y ago
  I would happily switch from Comcast but when I check availability for where I live in Livermore, they only offer 50Mbps. Currently paying ~180/mo for Comcast gigabit and TV (and phone that I don't use). I would fork over quite a bit for symmetrical gigabit, very jealous!
  • floren 7y ago
    I used Sonic in Livermore because despite the relatively low speeds, I didn't have to reboot the modem every week like Comcast!
    • fletchowns 7y ago
      I never use ISP provided equipment, I always use my own. Except when I had AT&T U-Verse, since I was forced to use their proprietary 2-wire modem (which was absolute garbage and required weekly reboots). However, with Comcast, I can use my own NETGEAR DOCSIS 3.1 modem which has been absolutely rock solid, I have never rebooted it in the two years I've had it.
      • schoen 7y ago
        > I have never rebooted it in the two years I've had it. That's awesome, but perhaps it needs a software update by now?
        • fletchowns 7y ago
          No ability to update the firmware manually of Netgear cable modems
• inferiorhuman 7y ago
  I had Sonic fiber for a while. The speeds definitely weren't consistent -- max downloads would suffer (but still be much faster than non-fiber offerings) during peak hours. Plus they still don't offer native IPv6, static IP addresses (they reneged on that), or reverse DNS with fiber (their ADSL offering still does). If all you're doing is "surfing the web" that's probably not a big deal. But it is a step down from the Sonic of yesteryear that was targeted at power users and had excellent customer support.