17 Mb/s on Sonic Fusion!

[SMS]

I had lunch today with a friend who followed my advice to dump AT&T and
go to Sonic. She is in Palo Alto and her AT&T Internet service had
somehow been over a city-owned fiber optic network in Palo Alto (not
U-Verse) and had been very slow. She had Sonic installed (they had to
roll a truck to her condo) and they installed it. She is getting a
whopping 17 Mb/s on DSL. She's pretty near the CO in downtown Palo Alto.
Meanwhile, I'm getting 3.1 Mb/s down.

[Mark Reinhold]

Post by SMS
I had lunch today with a friend who followed my advice to dump AT&T and
go to Sonic. She is in Palo Alto and her AT&T Internet service had
somehow been over a city-owned fiber optic network in Palo Alto (not
U-Verse) and had been very slow. She had Sonic installed (they had to
roll a truck to her condo) and they installed it. She is getting a
whopping 17 Mb/s on DSL. She's pretty near the CO in downtown Palo Alto.
Meanwhile, I'm getting 3.1 Mb/s down.

I love love Dane and his group at sonic. i just wish I was not on a RT
now and could get fusion

Somewhere on the left coast

My Parole Officer says cigars calm me down

[SMS]

Post by Mark Reinhold

Post by SMS
I had lunch today with a friend who followed my advice to dump AT&T and
go to Sonic. She is in Palo Alto and her AT&T Internet service had
somehow been over a city-owned fiber optic network in Palo Alto (not
U-Verse) and had been very slow. She had Sonic installed (they had to
roll a truck to her condo) and they installed it. She is getting a
whopping 17 Mb/s on DSL. She's pretty near the CO in downtown Palo Alto.
Meanwhile, I'm getting 3.1 Mb/s down.

I love love Dane and his group at sonic. i just wish I was not on a RT
now and could get fusion

Somehow Sonic has to do some more clever marketing. There seems to be a
great reluctance of some people to port from AT&T over to Sonic even
when the cost savings and performance improvements are pointed out to them.

I think that part of the problem is that the subscribers don't
understand that the phone service on Fusion is still over copper, and is
not VOIP, and they don't think that such a thing is even possible so
they're equating Sonic's phone service with VOIP like Comcast offers, or
to something like Vonage.

[Mike King]

Post by SMS
There seems to be a
great reluctance of some people to port from AT&T over to Sonic even
when the cost savings and performance improvements are pointed out to them.

There definitely are people who believe that AT&T is the ONLY phone
company. Some of them don't realize that phone service through
U-Verse is VOIP.

[David Kaye]

Post by Mike King
There definitely are people who believe that AT&T is the ONLY phone
company. Some of them don't realize that phone service through
U-Verse is VOIP.

I've recommended Sonic to various of my customers, gone back months later on
some new problem and found that they were still with AT&T. People tend to
stick with a company unless they're driven away, and then they tend to go
with only the biggest companies.

It's like the McDonald's paradox: people like to visit different places to
enjoy the local culture, but then they head for the nearest McDonald's.

[SMS]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Mike King
There definitely are people who believe that AT&T is the ONLY phone
company.  Some of them don't realize that phone service through
U-Verse is VOIP.

I've recommended Sonic to various of my customers, gone back months later on
some new problem and found that they were still with AT&T.  People tend to
stick with a company unless they're driven away, and then they tend to go
with only the biggest companies.

My sister-in-law was complaining about the cost of the various monthly
fees (3 cell phones, cable TV, broadband Internet) and I told her how
to significantly cut her monthly expenditures. She could save at least
$100 a month by moving her TV to Dish network, her internet and land
line to Sonic, and her three Verizon phones to Pageplus, with no
decrease in the services she uses (actually an increase in the level
of services). Nothing has changed though, except she did cut her
programming down on cable to the point where it's about the same as
much more programming on Dish Network, with a DVR.

I think people think that it's more of a hassle than it actually is to
make such changes. Also, though it's decreased in popularity, a lot of
people still use e-mail addresses tied to their ISP, but even that's
less than a hassle than they may thing to change.

You probably still have people paying for anti-virus and anti-malware
software when Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials are free and
usually better than the alternatives with yearly fees. It's hopeless.
Give up.

Post by David Kaye
It's like the McDonald's paradox: people like to visit different places to
enjoy the local culture, but then they head for the nearest McDonald's.

It's safe. And actually in many rural parts of the country it may be
as good as you're going to get. Went through some of those places last
summer. Tried this Chinese restaurant in Windom, MN <http://
i56.tinypic.com/72yjv4.jpg>. It's rural American-Chinese food that
only <I don't know who> could love. They were thrilled to have a party
of 7 in the restaurant since we were the only ones there, and they
were very nice. It was basic American Chinese food, and gave us
something to talk about.

[jcdill]

Post by SMS
My sister-in-law was complaining about the cost of the various monthly
fees (3 cell phones, cable TV, broadband Internet) and I told her how
to significantly cut her monthly expenditures. She could save at least
$100 a month

Tell her you know how she can save more than $1000 a year. For some
reason, $100/month doesn't sound like a lot of savings but $1000/year
does. Most people can think of more things they would like to do with
an extra $1000 (once a year) than with an extra $100 (per month).

jc

[David Kaye]

Post by SMS
I think people think that it's more of a hassle than it actually is to
make such changes.

I still have about 5 customers using dial-up! Even when I tell them they
can ditch their second phone line or they're be able to talk on the phone
while using their single line for Internet, they *still* don't want to
change.

The other day, I told a customer that it would take about 3 hours to do all
the various patches and upgrades he'd been putting off and paying me to do.
I offered to take the computer with me, do the upgrades and bring it back,
but no, he didn't want the computer to leave. So he paid me for 3 1/4 hours
to sit there and watch progress bars move v-e-r-y slowly.

Post by SMS
You probably still have people paying for anti-virus and anti-malware
software when Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials are free and
usually better than the alternatives with yearly fees. It's hopeless.
Give up.

Depends on the customer. I've managed to talk most of them into MSE or
Avast because they absolutely hate the nag screens, and obviously if their
Norton or McAfee worked as well as claimed, then I wouldn't have had to
visit them in the first place. That they can manage to wrap their brains
around.

But even so, once in awhile I'll make a return visit and they've installed
Norton again. Sheesh.

Post by SMS
It's safe. And actually in many rural parts of the country it may be
as good as you're going to get.

I remember some years back the "News & Review" weekly paper in Chico had a
Best Restaurants guide as voted by readers and EVERY SINGLE ONE was part of
a chain.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2011 14:03:51 -0700, "David Kaye"

Post by David Kaye
The other day, I told a customer that it would take about 3 hours to do all
the various patches and upgrades he'd been putting off and paying me to do.
I offered to take the computer with me, do the upgrades and bring it back,
but no, he didn't want the computer to leave. So he paid me for 3 1/4 hours
to sit there and watch progress bars move v-e-r-y slowly.

Usually, I can kidnap the computah, especially if it's a laptop.
However, I sometimes have the same problem. What I do is make a list
of necessary updates (using Belarc Advisor), download them at my
office, drag them back to the customers computah, and install them. If
it's already installed, the update will complain. Getting the order
right is always a problem, so I just do it numerical order.

Pet peeve is laptop owner going to a coffee shop to do the update
cerimony.

I'm not sure I believe you can update a typical machine in 3 hrs. At
dialup speeds, I can usually do 25 MBytes/hr download. That only
gives you 75 MBytes worth of download data, which my guess(tm) is
perhaps about 6 months worth of Windoze updates (assuming the last
monster service pack was installed and that Office had been
installed). I just did a Win 7 laptop that hadn't been updated for
about a year, and downloaded about 500MBytes of updates.
<http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/data_transfer_rate>

Also, watching the progress bar makes it move slower. Microsoft can
tell that you're watching through the web cam.

[David Kaye]

Post by Jeff Liebermann
Usually, I can kidnap the computah, especially if it's a laptop.
However, I sometimes have the same problem. What I do is make a list
of necessary updates (using Belarc Advisor), download them at my
office, drag them back to the customers computah, and install them.

Some updates, most notoriously, those from Adobe, don't allow saves anymore.
It appears that you have to download to the actual machine you're using.

As for Belarc, they're laughable. They marked my computer as having
security problems because such things as Remote Registry and Indexing were
turned off! Heck, no way would I turn Remote Registry on. Maybe they've
fixed that; I haven't scanned recently.

Post by Jeff Liebermann
I'm not sure I believe you can update a typical machine in 3 hrs. At
dialup speeds, I can usually do 25 MBytes/hr download.

That's about right. There weren't that many updates needed. And some of
them such as XP SP3, IE8, and Acrobat 9 I took from a disk. I said I'd get
to Acrobat 10 if and when it was needed, but I really couldn't afford the
extra time with the customer that day.

[d***@30.usenet.us.com]

Post by Jeff Liebermann
Pet peeve is laptop owner going to a coffee shop to do the update
cerimony.

At the coffee shop in town, they kicked out the guy who brought in three
of his customers' laptops to upgrade on their free WiFi.

[d***@30.usenet.us.com]

Post by Mike King
There definitely are people who believe that AT&T is the ONLY phone
company. Some of them don't realize that phone service through
U-Verse is VOIP.

Is U-Verse phone service VoIP, or just digital?

There was a CLEC in Santa Rosa offering something called T-Fire, I think,
around 2000. It was a T-1, split for digital phone service and the
leftover bandwidth given to internet. It was not VoIP.

Currently MediaCom Cable offers phone service, which might be similar.
The Data sheet for my DHG534 modem says "Voice is supported using the
PacketCable 1.5 standard NCS protocol or, if so desired, using the SIP
protocol."


Maybe it could be said that it is not VoI (Voice over Internet), since it
never reaches a public data network. ;-)

[Roy]

Post by d***@30.usenet.us.com

Post by Mike King
There definitely are people who believe that AT&T is the ONLY phone
company. Some of them don't realize that phone service through
U-Verse is VOIP.

Is U-Verse phone service VoIP, or just digital?

U-verse voice seems to be VOIP but goes over AT&T to the PSTN and never
crosses over any other network network

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AT%26T_U-verse

Post by d***@30.usenet.us.com
There was a CLEC in Santa Rosa offering something called T-Fire, I think,
around 2000. It was a T-1, split for digital phone service and the
leftover bandwidth given to internet. It was not VoIP.

This comes in both flavors. I just worked with a customer that bought
VOIP from Verizon. It was delivered via a T1 line. It was then broken
out into POTS at the router and fed to the customer's PBX. Since
Verizon controlled the equipment at either end of the line, they were
able to prioritize VOIP. When the voice bandwidth wasn't being used,
it could be consumed by data.

I have also worked on T1s where the voice occupied some T1 slots and
other slots were fed into the data portion of the router. In this mode,
bandwidth for the voice channels is fixed and can't be reused for data.

Post by d***@30.usenet.us.com
Currently MediaCom Cable offers phone service, which might be similar.
The Data sheet for my DHG534 modem says "Voice is supported using the
PacketCable 1.5 standard NCS protocol or, if so desired, using the SIP
protocol."
Maybe it could be said that it is not VoI (Voice over Internet), since it
never reaches a public data network. ;-)

[Jason Riedy]

Post by SMS
Somehow Sonic has to do some more clever marketing.

Agreed. A friend just moved to SF and started griping about her
network service choices... until I pointed her at Fusion.

I think a first step would be to have a big "compare your old
phone service to our phone service here" button of gizmo on
www.sonic.net... If you look only at the home page, it's not at
all obvious what Sonic offers.

[SMS]

Post by Jason Riedy

Post by SMS
Somehow Sonic has to do some more clever marketing.

Agreed. A friend just moved to SF and started griping about her
network service choices... until I pointed her at Fusion.
I think a first step would be to have a big "compare your old
phone service to our phone service here" button of gizmo on
www.sonic.net... If you look only at the home page, it's not at
all obvious what Sonic offers.

I think there may be the issue of directly comparing against a
competitor from whom you are dependent for infrastructure. Just like
Pageplus refrains from doing comparisons against Verizon, Sonic might
not want to do comparisons against AT&T.

In the appendix of a presentation I give called "Smart Phones, Dumb
Prices" I added a slide on Sonic Fusion versus AT&T, that compared them
side by side.

Slide is here: <Loading Image...>

Basically, before taxes and fees, equivalent landline + DSL service on
AT&T would be $86.25 (versus $40 for Sonic Fusion), after any
promotional offers expire. "Equivalent service" is a misnomer of course,
since AT&T does not offer a) VPN, b) unlimited data on DSL, c) Usenet,
d) FAX services, or e) competent technical support.

The $86.25 is for AT&T's fastest DSL speed which many people would not
pay for anyway, either because it's too expensive or because they're too
far from the CO office for it to work. This is the price after the
expiration of the $20 per month promotion for DSL Elite, and of course
you can bargain for a lower price when the promotion expires after 12
months.

Maximum DSL speeds on Sonic tend to be much faster, even though
supposedly they are capped by the distance to the CO and any issues with
the copper.

On AT&T you do get access to their paid Wi-Fi hot spots which you don't
get with Sonic (if you camp in California State Parks this is a nice
feature).

The AT&T site is so convoluted that it's hard to find your actual costs.
Also, AT&T's prices for some services are so high that few people would
ever subscribe to those sevices in the first place, so the comparison is
not so straightforward, i.e. few people would sign up for unlimited long
distance from AT&T, they would use some other provider like OneSuite;
few people would pay $5 per month for voice mail; and most people have
probably learned the trick to avoid the unlisted number fee.

[SMS]

Post by SMS

Post by SMS
Somehow Sonic has to do some more clever marketing.

Agreed. A friend just moved to SF and started griping about her
network service choices... until I pointed her at Fusion.
I think a first step would be to have a big "compare your old
phone service to our phone service here" button of gizmo on
www.sonic.net... If you look only at the home page, it's not at
all obvious what Sonic offers.

I think there may be the issue of directly comparing against a
competitor from whom you are dependent for infrastructure. Just like
Pageplus refrains from doing comparisons against Verizon, Sonic might
not want to do comparisons against AT&T.
In the appendix of a presentation I give called "Smart Phones, Dumb
Prices" I added a slide on Sonic Fusion versus AT&T, that compared them
side by side.
Slide is here: <http://i51.tinypic.com/2cy4n45.jpg>

Oops, just realized I have an error in that, the "DSL Cap" should be
"None" rather than "Included."

[SMS]

<Loading Image...>

I may send this to people, too... Just as a quick note, I've
never managed to get AT&T wifi access working in airports even
though they promise it. Boingo works in the same airports
(unless the airport's network is completely busted, which happens
far too often).

The airports I use the most now all have free wi-fi, San Francisco, San
Jose, and Fort Lauderdale. The past year or so has seen a lot of
conversions from paid to free wi-fi.

Here's one listing:

<http://www.wififreespot.com/airport.html>

though it's not up to date. I know that Dulles and National airports in
the D.C. area have free Wi-Fi as of April of this year, and it's likely
that there are many others that have added it as well.

Before SFO had free wi-fi I was sitting outside the International
Terminal waiting to be picked up and I was getting sonic.net wi-fi. Dane
suggested that perhaps there had been a Santa Rosa Airporter bus nearby,
and indeed there was.

[Brad Allen]

In article <4dee4e2a$0$2142$***@news.sonic.net>,
SMS <***@geemail.com> wrote:
" Maximum DSL speeds on Sonic tend to be much faster, even though
" supposedly they are capped by the distance to the CO and any issues
" with the copper.

Hm? They are capped, by various forces. This is for sure. I can
100% attest to that from personal experience. Fusion is a fantasy to
me, not a reality, because of this very reason.

[SMS]

Post by Jason Riedy

Post by SMS
Somehow Sonic has to do some more clever marketing.

Agreed. A friend just moved to SF and started griping about her
network service choices... until I pointed her at Fusion.

So was your friend willing to try Fusion? That seems to be the biggest
obstacle. It takes a tiny bit of effort to make a change, while throwing
money away month after month for an inferior product is easy.

There's a good quote by Mark Crispin, inventor of the IMAP e-mail protocol:

"It's best not to argue with people who are determined to lose. Once
you've told them about a superior alternative, your responsibility is
fulfilled and you can allow them to lose in peace."

[Jason Riedy]

Post by SMS
So was your friend willing to try Fusion?

Yes (as far as I know). Considerably less expensive for far
more, as you noted. She was moving in from out of state, so
there was no change from existing service.

Now if they'd just serve the Atlanta area... ;)

[Jeff Liebermann]

Post by SMS
"It's best not to argue with people who are determined to lose. Once
you've told them about a superior alternative, your responsibility is
fulfilled and you can allow them to lose in peace."

It doesn't work that way. Even the best ideas are ignored without the
requisite salesmen, cheerleaders, and evangelists. It's called follow
through. It's insufficient to proclaim a superior alternative. It
must be sold, explained, documented, blessed by the priesthood,
approved by the pundits, and have a catchy acronym. There's also a
natural law that states "For every great idea, there exists a group
dedicated to proving the superiority of the old way of doing it".

IMAP4 is a great example. Years ago, I ignored it because few ISP's
offered IMAP4 mail servers. Then, along came the iPhone which
requires IMAP4 in order for email to function sanely. That was also
enforced by Apple allowing exactly one email application on the
iPhone. So, yielding to pressure from the iHorde, ISP's began to
offer IMAP4. I tried it, liked it, declared it to be the superior
protocol, and nothing happened. My customers were used to using POP3
and were not interested in anything new. So were the support staffs
at certain un-named ISP's. Having declared it superior and giving my
stamp of approval was insufficient. I had to sell customers on the
idea, pester ISP's to support IMAP4, and then teach both how it works,
how it can be used, how to set it up, how to document the setup, and
how to fix odd problems (such as iTunes sync wiping out all the mail).
I don't know how many demos I've given on IMAP4.

You can lead a horse to water, but if you want to make it drink, you
have to nearly drown the horse.

[Dane Jasper]

Post by SMS
"It's best not to argue with people who are determined to lose. Once
you've told them about a superior alternative, your responsibility is
fulfilled and you can allow them to lose in peace."

My problem with this outlook is that I want them on the network!
Particularly now, as we're driving fiber toward areas with highest customer
density, we really want everyone to adopt.

[David Kaye]

Post by Dane Jasper
My problem with this outlook is that I want them on the network!
Particularly now, as we're driving fiber toward areas with highest customer
density, we really want everyone to adopt.

You're not doing it the American Way(R). See, what you need is to get a law
passed that requires fiber and can only be fulfilled by Sonic.net. That's
how the Big Guys do it.

Witness last night's unanimous vote/boondoggle to develop Treasure Island.
Wonder of wonders, it seems that of all the developers available worldwide
to put together what would be an international showplace, only Lennar of
Miami managed to fulfill the requirements to develop Treasure Island. Only
Lennar. And guess what -- they're also developing Hunters Point.

Frankly, I'm surprised that AT&T hasn't gotten some kind of laws put into
place favoring only them. I do know that they've been lobbying HARD to
install ugly sidewalk equipment boxes all over SF. I think they want to put
in 140 of them. They're crying that people won't "get a choice" in their
Internet providers unless this is allowed. (Of course, nobody mentions that
today's Comcast, which doesn't require sidewalk boxes) is the system that
was once ATT Broadband Internet. But MAN, AT&T is lobbying hard for those
sidewalk boxes.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2011 15:28:55 -0700, "David Kaye"

Post by David Kaye
Of course, nobody mentions that
today's Comcast, which doesn't require sidewalk boxes.

Huh? Comcast has sidewalk boxes. For example:
<Loading Image...>
Notice how well the aesthetic design blends in with the neighborhood
green ambience. Incidentally, I know where most of those boxes are in
the SCZ and SLV areas. Comcast (actually TCI and United Artists) had
the bad habit of placing them next to roadways, unlike AT&T, who knows
how to fortify their equipment boxes. As near as I can guess, nearly
all the roadside boxes have been hit by something.

[David Kaye]

Post by Jeff Liebermann
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/CATV-Pedestal.jpg>

I've seen a few of them but not many, and not the monstrosities AT&T wants
to put in. In many neighborhoods Comcast has undergrounded the mess or put
them on private property and easements so as not to block public walkways.
I know someone who has a Comcast box on his property; I think they discount
his cable service or something for the privilege.

[SMS]

Post by Dane Jasper

Post by SMS
"It's best not to argue with people who are determined to lose. Once
you've told them about a superior alternative, your responsibility is
fulfilled and you can allow them to lose in peace."

My problem with this outlook is that I want them on the network!
Particularly now, as we're driving fiber toward areas with highest customer
density, we really want everyone to adopt.

Outside of Sonoma county, Sonic.net lacks sufficient name recognition
for the adoption rates you want. Those of us on ba.internet know about
Sonic, but it would be rare for me to find anyone else in my area that
has heard of Sonic.

On the way to REI the other day I saw a Sonic billboard on Lawrence
Expressway near Saratoga Avenue, but it was advertising T1 service, not
Fusion. I question whether those researching T1 options are influenced
by billboards, though OTOH at least it makes them aware that there are
options other than AT&T.

Personally, I think that advertising in weekly community newspapers
would be a more effective use of marketing and ad dollars than
billboards. Be sure to include a QR code.

[Otto Pylot]

Post by SMS
I had lunch today with a friend who followed my advice to dump AT&T and
go to Sonic. She is in Palo Alto and her AT&T Internet service had
somehow been over a city-owned fiber optic network in Palo Alto (not
U-Verse) and had been very slow. She had Sonic installed (they had to
roll a truck to her condo) and they installed it. She is getting a
whopping 17 Mb/s on DSL. She's pretty near the CO in downtown Palo Alto.
Meanwhile, I'm getting 3.1 Mb/s down.

I'm 3800 copper feet from our CO in SouthEast San Jose and I'm capped
at 18Mbps but was originally getting 20Mbps on a max line of 21.2Mbps
with Fusion. They dropped my cap because of some line noise but I can't
see any difference. I still get a consistent 15-16Mbps wirelessly
anywhere in my house so I'm happy.

[steamer]

--ARGH! I'm sick of hearing these stories about how 'wonderful'
Fusion is!! I'm in an area with not only no Fusion but crappy DSL to boot! I'm
paying DSL fees and getting not much better than fast dialup service! It's
never been over 3MB/sec in my neck of the woods and I'm less than 5 miles
from Sonic central in Santa Rosa. Harrumph!