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Comment by stellar678 | Hacker News Reader

If you're in the Bay Area/California, I'd throw a strong recommendation behind Sonic.net and their great Fusion DSL service. $40/month for 20mbit DSL, $70 for 40mbit paired DSL. Plus, their support number is directly answered by human beings who live in the Bay Area.

And of course they're on the correct side of the SOPA insanity.

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Wow, thank you for this. I live in SF (Pac Heights) and did not know there was a decent alternative to Comcast (I don't qualify for Monkeybrains).

Just signed up for the two-line Fusion service. Peace out, Comcast.

Not necessarily great from my perspective -- seems like phone junction boxes are typically exposed to outside elements more often than cable boxes. When I was with sonic, data connection became crap when it rained.

I think it depends on your local area. I live in an area with really old telecom infrastructure, we have problems like that all the time. Rather than being in the MPOE, trouble is usually on the poles or in the air -- the bigger lines with bad insulation filling with water or other major equipment losing its battle with the weather.

Areas with newer infrastructure don't seem to have as much of a problem with this.

That's probably an AT&T issue then... they have to use the same lines that AT&T does for their DSL service.

I've been pretty happy with our Sonic.net service since we moved to the Bay Area (Redwood City) from Indiana this fall. One caveat is (at least where we are), is that Sonic has to run over the same copper that AT&T does, so you won't get any better signal than what you get from AT&T. And while you get the best service that Sonic can offer, 20Mbit is the upper limit. We get about 6Mbit. I've been seriously considering getting the paired Fusion service to bump that up to 12.

Overall though, I've been very happy with them. The only reason why I've considered switching is the speed. Cable is usually faster, but it's also more expensive and capped. So far though, I haven't been limited by the speed to worry about switching.

Second that. Just ordered Sonic (paired) and if it will show the decent speed, Comcast goes out of the window. I'm having 50Mbit service for $99 with them, company pays. And I don't watch TV since I don't remember when, Netflix filled this niche perfectly.

I had Sonic a few years ago here in San Francisco. They're customer service was awesome and I liked supporting a local company. Plus, they basically don't have data caps and if you're lucky, you might be able to (someday soon) take part in their fiber rollout.

We have Comcast now, who is the anthesis of Sonic, so we're thinking of switching.

If you live in San Francisco, then you can also try MonkeyBrains.net wireless internet. I have a friend that loves it and it's $35/mo for 'up to' 20mbs.

I had Sonic for many years, back in the days of dail-up, but then comcast started offering high speed where I was living - stuck with them after I moved again (out of laziness), but this is the perfect opportunity to go back to Sonic

If you're in a new-ish multitenant building in San Francisco or Oakland I highly recommend WebPass: http://webpass.net

$45/month for 100Mbps up/down

Thanks for reminding me about this; when it comes time to look for a new apartment this list is going to be very important.

Thanks for the recommendation! I didn't know about them, and I hated the fact that I had Comcast. I'll be planning a switch.

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