Sonic.net

Sonic.net is a mom and pop ISP gone regional. The name is an abbreviation of Sonoma Interconnect. They started out providing cheap internet services to Santa Rosa Junior College students in the early 1990's and just blew up from there. In addition to selling internet access, they're also a reseller of DirecTV satellite television and Verizon Wireless cellular service. Bundles are available.

Their DSL offerings in Davis top out at 6 Mbps down and 768 kbps up. There is no PPPoE and their modems are easily configured to operate in bridge mode. The standard dynamic option provides you a single IPv4 IP address that is subject to change but rarely does. You can also get 8 static IP addresses for a bit more money. Their "Fusion" DSL service offers up to 30 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up through pair-bonded annex M ADSL2+, a service now being offered in Davis through Nevada City-based Spiral Internet, and Shingle Springs-based Cal.net.

Beware of their DSL pricing: The rates on their website are promotional and will go away eventually. It used to be that you had to sign a contract for a year to get those rates, but this is no longer the case. Supposedly you can call up customer service before your rates go up and get the promotional rates extended indefinitely, but I haven't done this yet.

If you're interested in IPv6, they offer IPv6 tunnels to customers, which is much faster than using a third party.

They are a webhosting provider, selling both shared hosting on a cluster and server colocation. DavisWiki and Wiki Spot were collocated in Sonic's Santa Rosa data center for awhile.

2012-04-13 17:27:54   I switched over to them from Comcast about 2 months ago, and have been pretty happy with their internet service so far. In particular, customer service has been very responsive - their IT guy, Bax, has stayed around after hours to help troubleshoot my connection. Definitely a different experience than dealing with either Comcast or AT&T help.

The internet speed is pretty reasonable, but definitely not close to the 20Mbps potential advertised on the web site. Usually it's fine for streaming videos and such, but every once in a while it gets choppy - though it's much more reliable than the previous Comcast connection. I'm about 7700 feet from the DSL substation (according to their maps), so others that live closer would likely have speedier service. —TrayBiasiolli

2012-07-08 07:43:26   For clarity, Spiral Internet does sell Fusion: Internet+Phone in Davis - http://www.fusiondavis.com . Tray Biasiolli's customer service comment is about Spiral, not Sonic.net. Fusion is a next-level DSL Internet product offering speeds of up to 20Mbps (depending on how far you are located from the telephone Central Office) with unlimited Internet access and unlimited telephone service. Sonic.net has installed the equipment in the telephone company's central office to be able to bypass AT&T. Regarding pricing, Fusion is offered at a flat rate non-promotional pricing of $39.95 plus about $11 in telephone fees/taxes per month, with no contracts. Call Spiral at 530-478-9822 to sign up. Thanks, John Paul, Spiral Internet, Nevada City, California —JohnPaul

2016-04-26 12:20:35   Ordered Sonic for East Davis. They offer either 20mbps or 50mbps packages with phone. According to the CSR, the prices are not promotional, and they will not go up after a year. I'll add another comment on the speed of the service once I receive it (I ordered the 20mbps). —pfortunato