I sincerely hope more companies will follow in Google's footsteps with cheap prices for fast internet. As much as I love what Google does with its innovations, the more competition the better.
I hope so, too, because I'd worry about what a Google in Comcast's position would do. Google isn't the net neutrality champion it was a decade ago. They are still in the group that promotes net neutrality right now, but I don't think they're trying too hard. Even AOL [1] seems to outspend them on pro-net neutrality lobbying (AOL!). Google must be quite worried about FCC reclassifying Internet providers are common carriers, too, and they probably don't want that either, otherwise they'd outright push for it.
That's why I'm thrilled it's Sonic doing this. They've been my (DSL) ISP for almost 3 years now, and I couldn't be happier. (Well, it could be faster; I'm 9k-odd line-feet from the CO, so even with bonded Fusion, I'm only getting 10/2 — but I'd rather pay Sonic more for less bandwidth than subsidize the stain upon the species that is Comcast.)
Also, supposedly Google met with cable/phone companies to try to make pretty much the current fast lane proposal for their own content a few years ago (2008) [0]. Apparently those companies were "reluctant so far to strike a deal because of concern it might violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality." so Google's position here is somewhat confusing.
I fail to see how this model works unless it's being subsidized by some other source. Fiber is not cheap to purchase, deploy or to maintain as a medium, let alone all of the equipment that lights it, routers that will route it, and upstream network to offload the traffic. I see that the city will be leasing them the conduit, which will make deployment significantly cheaper, but didn't see any details on rates. If one person uses 500Mbps (half of their bandwidth) for 37 hours out of the month, and sonic.net has negotiated basement bottom prices for bandwidth alone at say $0.50/Mbps, that is still a $250 cost to them as a provider. Sure there's over-subscription models, but even if a small percentage of their users actually use the bandwidth, they would have to be losing money on this approach unless they traffic shape or cap speeds slower as a "shared" resource. Can someone please explain how the economics of a deal like this could lead to profit for the provider?
Most people won't come close to using 500Mbps at any time, let alone for 37 hours. As long as they peer with Netflix, Google/YouTube, Facebook and a few others almost all meaningful traffic will be "free".
Also, business pricing is $40/seat... there's going to be a good amount of profit there, I'd guess. It's also not easy to use even 500 Mbps, I would guess even heavy users would rarely sustain that much traffic (although there would certainly be some)
Excellent. Now, even if they don't deliver to my neighborhood (which is kind of a toss up, as I'm next to a school, but also in a cluster of much older than average housing), my comcast speeds will improve. Thank goodness for some competition, and some shockingly sensible city government.
I had Sonic ADSL until recently, and their customer service was excellent, but I'm just too far from the CO to get reasonable speeds, so I (sadly) switched to Comcast. I hope that some point they will start offering FTTH in my neighborhood (50 miles west of Brentwood), but who knows if local city government will ever allow it.
Yea, it's really tough -- I currently have Sonic in Alameda and do not want to switch back to Comcast, but at the 4/1 speeds I'm currently getting it makes it hard to work from home.
Note that Sonic does a bit of a con on the "free" phone service. They won't let you forgo the phone service. That results in additional $12 in charges and taxes on your bill, over half of which is a fee that goes entirely to Sonic. In the US phone companies are allowed to charge extra fees to comply with the law, and Sonic charges the maximum allowable. Not even AT&T does that! Of course they are very skilled at making it look like the fee goes to the government, but it doesn't.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadhttp://www.theverge.com/2014/5/16/5724952/companies-that-hat...
[0] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122929270127905065
Also, business pricing is $40/seat... there's going to be a good amount of profit there, I'd guess. It's also not easy to use even 500 Mbps, I would guess even heavy users would rarely sustain that much traffic (although there would certainly be some)
What a strange place to launch a service.
Sonic's a darn good ISP, though. I wish they offered service in my area, I'd take them up in a heartbeat.