

Gigabit Internet for $80 - Nogwater
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/gigabit-internet-for-80-the-unlikely-success-of-californias-sonicnet.ars

======
veidr
I'm from Sebastopol; sonic.net is a truly great ISP. I've cited them as an
example of great customer service _in general_ , not just within the
(typically awful) ISP industry.

I now live in Tokyo; I enjoy synchronous gigabit fiber access for a similar
price. (It's actually closer to $50, but that's because my whole building is
wired for it, and the building management has negotiated a group price.)

The difference is, here in Japan, pretty much anybody in any major metro area
can get cheap gigabit Internet service (or synchronous 100Mbps at the very
least). That's because here we do have a level of (intelligent) regulation;
precisely the kind of regulation that this article points out the FCC
eliminated during the Bush administration. There can obviously only be a tiny
number of companies who run last-mile cables (telco and electric utilities
here). So if those companies aren't required to reasonably resell that acess,
you will never achieve the kind of competitive landscape that drives rapid
progress.

It's pretty awesome that Sonic is able to do this in sleeply little
Sebastopol, but it's pretty sad that _most_ of America languishes under with
barbarously primitive connection speeds of just a few Mbps because of its
dysfunctional government.

EDIT: My anecdote about their service harkens back to when DSL was fairly new.
My connection was flaking out one day, so I called. It rang twice. "Hello,
Sonic.net." What, no menu tree? I explained the gist of the problem. "Do you
mind if I connect to your DSL modem and check it out?" Of course not. "OK, I'm
seeing the problem. Some of these units unfortunately shipped with slightly
incorrect settings. I've updated those for you; is it working now?" It was.
Total time on the phone was _maybe_ 90 seconds. Even getting a human on the
phone in that time was pretty astonishing (and still is).

~~~
mwsherman
The argument for forced sharing of the last mile isn’t that it’s a natural
monopoly – that’s unempirical but commonly claimed. (Prior to FedEx and UPS,
smart people thought package delivery was a natural monopoly.)

The better argument is that the providers of last mile are beneficiaries of
prior regulation which meant that they were able to build a gov’t-protected
monopoly.

The latter is a legitimate but, to me, not dispositive. We want competition on
the last mile (and every mile) and line-sharing regulation simply cements
incumbents, as no new entrant would desire to be in a business of regulated
rates.

Now, we might simply accept that prior damage has ruined that market beyond
repair and the least-bad solution is to force line-sharing. But I’d rather see
lots of Sonic’s building a new set of last miles.

~~~
oconnore
Suburbia in general is only possible with supportive regulation. There is a
reason Sonic's business model has only developed in very dense neighborhoods
(4000 person/mi^2 vs <1000p/mi^2 for other suburbs).

If we are going to live in economically infeasible locations, relying on
government subsidy to pay $30m/mi to build highways to shuttle us to work,
then we are going to have to rely on subsidy for other aspects of our lives as
well. The regulation/subsidy-free ship sailed about the time we started the
national highway project, collectively bought an automobile company, etc.

~~~
twoodfin
> relying on government subsidy to pay $30m/mi to build highways to shuttle us
> to work

Highways are paid for overwhelmingly by user fees (largely fuel taxes), not
general revenue. On the federal funding side it's over 90%.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Finan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Financing)

There's little to no evidence that the Interstate Highway System couldn't be
self-sustaining if that were desirable. As it is, the federal government
decides instead that about 1/6 of the money raised by fuel taxes and other
fees should go to public transit, and states prefer to get their funding
contribution from property and other taxes.

~~~
babblefrog
This appears to be dependent on how you interpret the numbers. See
<http://uspirg.org/reports/usp/do-roads-pay-themselves> for another view.

~~~
twoodfin
Well, of course Naderites are going to have that perspective. But stuff like
this isn't particularly persuasive:

> Since 1947, the amount of money spent on highways, roads and streets has
> exceeded the amount raised through gasoline taxes and other so-called “user
> fees” by $600 billion (2005 dollars), representing a massive transfer of
> general government funds to highways.

$600 billion 2005 dollars over 64 years? That's an average of less than
$10B/year for a system that serves literally every American, either directly
or indirectly through the goods that are delivered by trucking.

Even if road spending has been growing faster than the rate of inflation, that
would still be a bargain at twice the price. If I were a properly motivated
advocacy group, I bet I could produce a number with a T at the end of it and
somewhat plausibly claim its the economic activity currently dependent on the
asphalt transportation system.

It takes a real ideological bent to call that a "massive transfer of general
government funds". After all, some of those general government funds are
filling in gaps left by drivers subsidizing train, bus, and subway passengers.
Presumably a not insignificant chunk of the rest represents municipal costs,
where it's hard to use tolls or gas taxes to build local roads that literally
everyone uses even if they're just biking to the train station.

------
zanny
Nobody seems to be asking, but I will - why isn't network cable grouped under
the same class of utilities provided by local governments that include roads,
sewers, and in some countries, electricity?

I know in America we have the completely stupid system where electricity is at
a regulated rate but privately provided by a given monopoly company at any
given household.

That is actually another example of the problem. If governments didn't suck,
and our collective interests were not clouded and in general ill thought, we
would have fiber to the home be a national works project to help pull the
country out of the recession.

It is currently so expensive to lay fiber because the demand and supply are in
this convoluted state, where no one demands it due to the monopolies so no one
makes it in great quantity so prices are artificially high so no one wants it.

If we had a gov't project to lay fiber, the massive demand (unless the gov't
did the entire supply chain like they did with the NHS) would spur industry
growth, and we could then export our huge fiber industry (which is high tech
manufacturing, like carbon nanotubes would be in bulk) to everyone else and
actually have industry again.

Of course, that would never happen, because governments almost never do
anything right. And if they do it right, they do it insanely over budget and
late. But it is nice to dream.

I think it might possibly work at the local level. It doesn't have the huge
instantaneous demand boom of the material as a national project, but regions
that have access to the raw components used in fiber tubing (sand is a silica
right? Not pure enough I assume, we make the stuff somewhere out of silicates
though) could subsidize and start the industry, and then sell the company
after they spur demand by using their own fiber supply to give every home 100
gigabit internet connections.

Fast forward a decade and the initial cost investment to build the industry
would be paying dividends in national productivity and the export market we
would have for fiber. Rather than go from (on average) 56 kbps internet in
2000 to 300kbps in 2012, we could have a third of the population on fiber in a
decade.

It really comes back to infrastructure. Nobody makes subways or national
transit systems or lays railroads across the nation unless there is a huge
unrealistic demand that forces businesses to act or if the collective power of
representational government uses the investment potential of taxpayers to
create and fund the services that make everyone's lives better but no one can
justify giving on a case by case basis for a quick profit in the next quarter
financial report.

Alas, pipe dreams. I wish I had sonic, I get the lovely fun of picking between
the staunchly competitive only ISP in my area that provides single banded DSL
at 300 kbps for $50 over the copper phone lines that have been in the ground
for half a century. God bless America.

~~~
pushingbits
I remember someone telling me that in Sweden when you move into a place, you
can just plug your network cable in, your browser will direct you to a page
where you can select whatever provider you like, enter your payment details
and you are online.

~~~
henrikschroder
Yes, that exists in a few places, there are ISPs like <http://opennet.se/>
that do those deals. But then the owner of the building, typically the housing
co-op, foots the hardware bill, and each household chooses an actual ISP and
is billed according to the chosen service.

It's a nice model, but costs more in total than other arrangements. My house
is going to get hooked upto fibre this year, and I was checking up on this for
my housing co-op, and the cheapest and best by far is to tie ourselves to a
provider for five years and get a group deal. That way everyone in the house
gets 100/100mbit for less than $20/month, and everyone can upgrade from that
basic package to gigabit if they want, but that's currently costing ~$150 a
month.

However, all of this is possible due to the Stockholm municipal fibre company,
Stokab. They've been around for at least a decade now, digging up streets,
laying fibre, hooking up buildings, and since they're making good profit,
they're re-investing that into providing fibre for everyone in Stockholm.

------
ajays
This is all the more reason why we need a municipal fiber network in major
cities (dense urban areas). Don't get me wrong: I love what Sonic is doing,
and plan to move to them as my ISP very soon. But the fact that it's so hard
for Sonic to build out the fiber infrastructure shows that this is where a
government run infrastructure makes sense; after all, isn't the government
supposed to take on the massive infrastructure projects?

I live in San Francisco. I've been reaching out to my supervisor about this
community fiber thing, but to no avail. In the meantime, he goes along with
AT&T's plan to install 100s of refrigerator-sized boxes on sidewalks, to
provide their "uverse"-brand Internet (which is not GbE). A handful of
citizens -vs- highly-paid suits of AT&T? Citizens always lose.

Here's the problem with letting AT&T build out these boxes: they then become a
monopoly. If Sonic wants to come in and provide fiber, they also need 100s of
such boxes. And then Comcast. And maybe MonkeyBrains (there is such an ISP
here). And so on. This is not sustainable! You can't have every ISP putting up
large boxes on sidewalks!

A solution is for the City to lay fiber and maintain it; and then you buy
access from AT&T/Sonic/MonkeyBrains/Comcast. Only 1 set of boxes; and Internet
access can come from any of the myriad gateways available. As for funding:
thats what bonds are for. And plus: the increase in property values will pay
for this in no time at all (via increased tax revenues).

But trying to convince the politicians to listen to a citizen is impossible.
They just go along with the lobbyists, who are just looking after their own
short-term interests.

------
jedberg
I love Sonic. I wish I could get them at my house in Cupertino (hint hint). I
would drop UVerse without hesitation.

We got Sonic for the reddit office and it is awesome. One day, a Sonic rep
stopped by, unannounced, just to make sure everything was satisfactory. It was
amazing.

------
saryant
Back when I lived in the North Bay (2001ish) I switched from SBC to Sonic.net
for my DSL service. After setting up the new connection I got a call Dane
Jasper asking if everything was satisfactory. Needless to say, I was
completely blown away by this.

Their service was absolutely amazing. No phone menus, techs who wouldn't make
you run through their script if you knew what was going on, simple pricing. I
miss having them as my ISP.

(The 4 static IPs were pretty awesome too)

~~~
mbreese
For clarification, Dane Jasper is the CEO of Sonic. He still regularly answers
posts on their forums too.

------
lukev
At this point in history, would most users even be able to benefit from
gigabit connection speeds?

I have 20mbps FiOS, and I feel like my connection is almost _never_ the
limiting factor in delays online. Sites that are actually serving at full
speed load in a fraction of a second. Lots of sites are slow, but it's almost
always the server side or intervening networks (overseas sites, etc.)

For the vast majority of content, 20 reliable mbps completely meets my needs.
I can stream HD video with no buffering. I can download ISO images in much
less time than it takes to boot a VM. My Dropbox syncs within a few seconds: I
can't recall actually having to wait for a file to be available.

Not saying that gigabit internet isn't awesome. But I don't feel like
connection speed is the major bottleneck on the internet experience right now
for those who can get a > 15mbps connection. I'd rather focus on expanding the
availability of that, before we move on to the next tier of bandwith-heavy
applications.

~~~
djtriptych
At this point in history, would users even be able to benefit from 28.8kbps
connection speeds?

I have a 14.4, and I feel like the BBS's and AOL chat rooms I frequent
struggle to keep up. What could I possibly need double the speed for??

Not saying 28.8k isn't great, but the internet just doesn't need speeds like
that yet. Better to focus on getting everyone up to 14.4k first.

~~~
lukev
Of _course_ we can and will use more.

But in any optimization scenario, you _eliminate bottlenecks first_. I
question whether the ISP to home link is the bottleneck in the modern internet
experience the way it was in 1998.

~~~
NegativeK
Netflix has argued that it is.

The companies that are trying to do remote-gaming are probably having issues
with bandwidth.

The days it took to upload my music collection to Google Music all argue it
is.

Bandwidth isn't the only bottleneck, but it's holding some technology back.

------
muhfuhkuh
I thought because of various fallacious reasons, gigE was highly improbable in
the US. At least, that the was the reason given when S. Korea, Japan, and
major cities in China were blessed with it.

I've heard everything from geography (even in NYC, one of the densest
population on Earth, we couldn't get it together for consumer gigE) to culture
(yes, culture! As I understand it from various explanations, we're too
culturally "heterogeneous" for gigE connections. No seriously.)

I wonder how Sonic made the highly improbable not only possible but,
apparently, profitable?

~~~
ars
> even in NYC, one of the densest population on Earth

NYC is not even close to the densest population on Earth - it's not even in
the top 50.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popula...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density)
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=new+york+population+den...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=new+york+population+density)

~~~
wtallis
If you restrict it to just Manhattan, then it's almost in the top 10. And if
you account for wealth, there's no comparison: all else equal, Manhattan
should be the most lucrative market on earth for fast internet service.

~~~
ars
No, just Manhattan is 46th in the list, and if restrict metropolitan areas to
the densest parts, I bet that list would change dramatically pushing Manhattan
further down.

It's also an incredibly expensive place to install anything since all the
wires are underground, and on top of that you have to do night work, and it
has very high labor rates.

Manhattan is probably the last place to get this sort of thing.

------
shrike
I recently moved to Seattle where CondoInternet offers unmetered 1Gbps
symmetric Internet access for $200/month or 100Mb for $60. Having access that
fast changes the way you think about using the Internet; I'm able to host TOR
bridge nodes, mirror OSS projects, move VMs around, etc.

It's actually meant consolidating a lot of my non-critical stuff back home,
I've been able to decommission a couple of Linodes and AWS instances in favor
of a machine running XEN in the closet.

------
openbear
The price is actually ≈ $70 per month. From the article ...

 _Update: the initial version of this article mistakenly listed the price of
Sonic's gigabit service at $79.95; it is actually $69.95._

That's amazing. Here I thought I was getting a bargain with 15Mbps SDSL for
$25 per month (our mid-rise condo building in downtown San Jose, CA struck a
deal with our ISP if some percentage of residents signed up).

------
GigabyteCoin
Currently living in the same setup in Toronto (same price point for 100mbps
unlimted), although it's not available to new subscribers anymore
unfortunately. They upped the price $5 and added a 300GB cap. That's with
Telus in downtown Toronto. It's been available for the last 8 or so years I
believe. Since 2004.

I noticed Hamilton Ontario (and much of it's south-easternly towns) of all
places has unlimited 100mbps available via Shaw Hamilton. That only costs
~$100/month: <http://www.shawhamilton.ca/index.php?internet>

I am seriously considering moving to hamilton after I move out of this place
literally just for the internet connection.

~~~
jarek
Is that the Telus downtown condo setup? I saw ads for it as recently as a
couple of months ago, is it really no longer available?

Also... 5 megabit upload hurts when you have 100 megabit down.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Well... the 100mbps is still available, sure. (It's available in all
"Cityplace Concorde" buildings as far as I know, which are all just west of
the skydome on bremner/fort york)

It's 100mbps download and 5mbps upload.

The only thing that has changed within the last year is the are charging $5
more per month for the same speed with a 300GB limit. That's what this URL
says at least, I registered years ago and got the unlimited and thankfully
they haven't cut me off:
[http://www.telus.com/content/standalone/cityplace/internet.h...](http://www.telus.com/content/standalone/cityplace/internet.html)

(errr, uhhh, wow... I was wrongly mistaken, looks like it's $100/month or $60
more per month for the 300GB cap of 100mbps download now... wow.. I am only
paying $40/month for unlimited but that's a 2 year old contract.)

Unfortunately for me I am leaving in a few days :S

------
nazgulnarsil
It's really depressing that small regulatory changes are playing such big
roles in whether a business is a runaway success or a bankruptcy spiral. That
barriers to entry have sharply gone up in several key industries should be the
huge story for the US economy.

------
bwarp
At the risk of sounding like a whinging old man, but do we really need 1Gbit
to the home at the moment?

If you take the UK as an example, a lot of the country (outside major cities
and metropolitan areas) is still stuck on 512kbit. The same is true worldwide
with even parts of SA on dialup. Shouldn't we be concentrating on throwing
more resources into getting these connections usable rather than feeding crazy
large bandwidth to the rich?

As the broadband speeds are controlled pretty much by consumer demand, isn't
it better to have more people than an elite few?

On the same subject, I'm sitting here on approximately 12Mbits and I genuinely
have no problems with it streaming HD iPlayer and with three computers on it.
I don't need any faster and it costs a whopping $20 a month equiv (unmetered
consumption).

Also, if you consider the cost of bandwidth and caps thrown on people in
Europe, a gig connection would suck up your entire allocation in about 48
seconds...

~~~
jarito
An interesting argument and a straw-man argument. Let's deal with the straw
man first. Just because you have no use for the extra speed doesn't mean
others do not. In addition, systems / uses for the speed will only be built
when the number of people with access to it is growing. Therefore, there will
be early adopters where the speed will gain them little initiallly, but over
time we will develop more services that need it.

Now let's deal with the remote people problem. There are already efforts
underway to more efficiently service outlying areas. These generally revole
around WiMax and things like Lightspeed (although that looks dead for the
moment). People who live far from cities will not be served as well. That's
they way it will always be do to the economics of population density, hence
the reason that serving those environments typically include long range
wireless. Second, since when do we need to get everyone at the same level
before we move forward? Would we be where we are now in personal computing if
we stopped in 1996 to make sure everyone had a computer before we built faster
ones? We can continue in the same way we have with universal access fees
supporting access to non-city dwellers, but that's no reason to prevent
progress in cities.

------
mike-cardwell
I have access to about 20Gbit at work (University). At home, I think I have
about 8Mbit or something. I don't notice the difference. 8Mbit is (currently)
more than fast enough for the vast majority of people using the vast majority
of services on the Internet. I doubt I'd even notice if my home connection
dropped to 2Mbit.

~~~
zxoq
I have a 1 gbit connection at home and there is little difference to the 100
mbit connection I have at my parents. The gains are pretty much the same as
the difference having wifi and gigabit LAN. Transferring large files etc. are
in the minute range rather than tens of minutes or even hours.

But 10mbit is definitely not enough to use the internet effectively, hell, my
HDTV soaks up that much just watching any a generic HD channel, if you had 2
TVs running it would slow to a crawl.

~~~
mike-cardwell
Well, I guess I must not be using the Internet, "effectively," then, whatever
that means.

------
kev009
I've only bought up to one gigabit at the transit level, and it bottoms out at
about $1/mbit currently at that commit.

So what are you really getting for $80/mo? If you try to really use (or abuse
in some people's minds) that last mile gigabit, how long till you get cut or
prompt crap like deep packet inspection and throttling? The "Internet" as we
know it is a tricky thing.

I'd prefer something like 20mbps sync to the home that you're free to use as
you see fit at that price point. The economics of this should work out fine.

~~~
mbreese
I know Sonic is publicly against limits and throttling [1]. Their DSL
connections don't have any sort of caps. Now, with Fiber the scale may be
different, but I don't see their position changing.

Their CEO also said that bandwidth wasn't their biggest cost. (but I can't
find the link...)

[1] <http://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/12/02/web-hogs/>

~~~
kev009
Ideally it would be something like, "we have 100gbit of combined IP transit
purchased and peering with google, he.net, and herpderp" and TCP/IP would do
it's thing.

Particularly when you hear of countries outside the US, 100+ mbit Internet is
a very relative thing and it depends very much on where that traffic is going.

I'm all for building out last-mile distribution with fiber, but what's
possible on Cable and DSL is very good and adequate for the current generation
of services if the policies would match what the technologies are capable of.
The elephant in the room is that good Internet will continue to eat the lunch
of Cable TV and phone. Bandwidth caps are more about keeping you in line as a
"good consumer" than the economics of IP transit.

~~~
shimon_e
OVH in Europe has 1tbps in combined IP peering/transit. They are renting
servers with 10gbps ports for about $200. Just yesterday they added 80gbps to
Paris.
[http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showpost.php?p=41454&postcount=33](http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showpost.php?p=41454&postcount=33)

Hope Sonic builds a powerful network.

~~~
kev009
Read the small print. "Traffic is unlimited. If you exceed 40 TB / month, the
connection will be limited to 10 Mbps."

That works out to a bit over 100mbps commit. A fair enough deal but nothing
spectacular. Doing 10gbps ports is a neat marketing trick but I can't think of
too many situations where you'd balloon that large and yet still sit within
40TB/mo where a gigabit port would be a serious bottleneck.

Just keep in mind the carriers are using at most 40gbit and 100gibt optical
lines and trunking them together. If you wire an entire neighborhood with
gigabit last mile, or a DC with 10gig to the node, it all coalesces somewhere
at the network access points. For home subscribers, I'd much rather prefer a
quality product in the 10s of mbit for the next few years, the only point I
was originally trying to make. The argument for laying gigabit last mile has
more to do with last mile life cycle IMHO than truly giving customers a full
gigabit pipe at the moment.

~~~
shimon_e
Then it is 0.89 per TB and that's for UK customers. French customers and
customers who sign up through ovh.com get a completely different bandwidth
structure. They get "unbilled" bandwidth but only get a few hundred mbps
dedicated with each peer. Google it. It's due to competition from online.net
in france.

10gbps makes sense if you also have 1gbps servers in their network.

BTW Sonic.net is $70/m. The article was mistaken.

------
easp
Grrrrr. I wish someone would give Comcast some competition in Seattle's
neighborhoods of single family homes, because CenturyLink, the telco, doesn't
seem up to it.

------
marshallp
Areas with high speed internet might see their house prices go up. If this
happens, it might become profitable for homeowners to band together to finance
high speed internet installation. Of course, they will need internet based
coordination for this to happen efficiently. There might an opportunity for
startups in that space.

~~~
veidr
In the US, they will likely also have to battle expensive lawsuits from the
(sleazy) corporate incumbent oligopolists (and the influence of their
lobbyists).

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-price-
of...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-
broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars)

It has been done some places, however...

~~~
marshallp
There might be an opportunity for a startup in the too ... we-hate-
telecoms.com

------
hackermom
This is American news. Speeds like these, for this and smaller price tags, are
not the least unheard of in Europe or Asia. I'm glad to see that some American
ISPs dare to move things forward.

------
Tossrock
I think the authors of this article may not realize that a gigabit is
equivalent to 125 megabytes. The caption saying that it's "actually much
faster" than the 134 Mbps listed by speedtest is silly.

~~~
veidr
No, the test results are in _megabits_ per second, not megabytes, so the
author got it right.

You were probably misled by the way the speedtest client reports the results
though: "134 Mb/s" I have never seen megabits-per-second indicated that way;
usually it would be "134 Mbps". But it's still "Mb" and not "MB" if you look
closely.

------
vgoel
Don't get tempted by this. I live in Palo Alto and allowed myself to be
enticed by the Sonic.net's advertised promise of "... Broadband at up to
20Mbps ...". I actually got 1.5 Mbps download speed. I would not have been
tempted had they been advertising "Broadband speeds 1.5 Mbps - 20 Mbps. You
may get lucky and be on the high end or you may not."

~~~
mbreese
The problem with Sonic's DSL is that they are still dependent upon AT&T for
the copper lines. I've been fighting with them for 3 weeks to get a stable DSL
connection (I have their bonded service). After a tech visit everything
starting working better (I think it was a config issue on the router).

But it was quite apparent that for Sonic, AT&T is a big problem. For most of
their coverage area, they are still dependent upon AT&T to actually hook their
customers up. And AT&T has no interest in maximizing your Sonic ADSL2+. They'd
rather you buy VDSL/Uverse from them. I think this is what drove Sonic to
start working in Fiber. Not only was it the only way to get gigabit speeds,
but it was the best way for them to take control of their own destiny. When
you own the fiber, you can make your customers happy. When you rely on AT&T
for the copper lines, you are limited in what you can do.

(For the record, I'm in Redwood City and getting ~12Mbps down with 2 bonded
lines from Sonic).

