Sonic is a

telecommunications company A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...

and

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

based in

Santa Rosa, California Santa Rosa ( Spanish for " Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and ...

, acting as a

competitive local exchange carrier A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company (sometimes called a "carrier") competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrier ...

in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

, and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

History

Sonic began as an effort to bring network connectivity and

Internet access Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Interne ...

to staff and students at the campus of Santa Rosa Junior College. In 1994, Sonic began formal Internet operations by way of a partnership between Dane Jasper and Scott Doty, both of whom had worked on the network at Santa Rosa Junior College. In 1995, Sonic moved into its downtown Santa Rosa location. In 2011, after becoming concerned about increasing legal requests for users' data, mostly related to

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...

involving

pornography Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

, Sonic cut the time it stores logs of user activity to two weeks. Later in 2011, the U.S. government forced Sonic and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

to turn over e-mail addresses of people who had corresponded with

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

volunteer and Tor developer

Jacob Appelbaum Jacob Appelbaum (born 1 April 1983) is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. He studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software networ ...

. Sonic and Google fought the secret court order, which CEO Dane Jasper characterized as "rather expensive, but the right thing to do," and the court agreed to lift the seal on the Sonic order to give Appelbaum a copy of it. In 2012, Jasper told

TorrentFreak __NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...

that Sonic will not be participating in the so-called "six strikes" plan, in which major U.S.

Internet service providers An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

will begin to warn and punish people suspected of infringing copyrights, saying that ISPs are not equipped to police the actions of individuals, and that the

MPAA The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distrib ...

and

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...

have not invited small, independent ISPs to participate. In late 2014, Sonic.net rebranded as Sonic, after acquiring sonic.com and @sonic twitter handle. In April 2015, the company partnered with AT&T to expand service, using fiber-to-the-node. Due to this partnership, Sonic customers have to follow AT&T policies, including any access given to the federal government. Sonic customers can utilize a VPN to avoid AT&T policies and Sonic requests court orders for any investigations requested by the law. In December 2018, Sonic announced a partnership with eero inc., creator of the first whole-home WiFi mesh system, to improve WiFi connectivity across the entire home.

Services

Sonic offers a number of services including: * 10 Gigabit Fiber – residential product * Gigabit Fiber – combined voice (VoIP) and data service offering up to 1,000Mbit/s per line using

Passive Optical Networking A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple en ...

, with unlimited nationwide land line voice. Sonic has full control of the line: subscribers are on Sonic's IP space. Available in select markets, currently only Northern California locations. * Fusion

ADSL2+ G.992.5 (also referred to as ADSL2+, G.dmt.bis+, and G.adslplus) is an ITU-T standard for asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet access. The standard has a maximum theoretical downstream sync speed of 24 megabits per second ...

– combined voice (POTS) and data service offering up to 20Mbit/s per line, with unlimited nationwide land line voice. Sonic has full control of the line: subscribers are on Sonic's IP space. * Fusion

VDSL2 Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber line ...

– combined voice (POTS) and data service offering up to 75Mbit/s with the same limitations as Fusion ADSL2+. This subscription is served from a CO where Sonic has full control of the line cards and therefore remove any artificial limitation in speed that a subscriber can get. The requirement for getting this service is an individual has to be relatively close to the CO, up to 4000 feet. X2 is also available which will roughly double the speed. * Fusion FTTN (VDSL2) – combined voice (VoIP) and data service offering from 20Mbit/s up to 75Mbit/s through bonding (X2), with unlimited nationwide land line voice. This is resold

AT&T U-verse U-verse TV is a DirecTV brand of IPTV service. Launched on June 26, 2006, U-verse included broadband Internet (now AT&T Internet or AT&T Fiber), IP telephone (now AT&T Phone), and IPTV (U-verse TV) services in 48 states.ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

service delivered over an

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...

voice line. This service is obsolete and Sonic is no longer accepting legacy ADSL1 subscriptions. * Hosting – website hosting services. * Colocation – datacenter colocation in Santa Rosa, CA.

References

External links

* {{CATV USA 1994 establishments in California Broadband Companies based in Sonoma County, California Companies based in Santa Rosa, California Telecommunications companies established in 1994 Fiber to the premises Internet service providers of the United States Telecommunications companies of the United States

History

Services

See also

References

External links