 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet and Telecommunication |
| Founded | September 1994 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | California |
Key people | Dane Jasper, CEO [1] |
| Website | www |
Sonic is a telecommunications company and internet service provider based in Santa Rosa, California, acting as a competitive local exchange carrier in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. [2] [3]
Sonic began as an effort to bring network connectivity and Internet access 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 the college. [4] In 1995, Sonic moved into its downtown Santa Rosa location. [5]
In 2011, after becoming concerned about increasing requests for users' data by private law firms, mostly related to copyright infringement involving pornography, Sonic cut the time it stores logs of user activity to two weeks. [6] [7]
Later in 2011, the US federal government forced Sonic and Google to provide e-mail addresses of people who had corresponded with WikiLeaks volunteer and Tor developer Jacob Appelbaum. 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. [8] [9]
In 2012, Jasper told TorrentFreak that Sonic would not be participating in the so-called "six strikes" plan, in which major US internet service providers would 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 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had not invited small, independent ISPs to participate. [10]
In late 2014, Sonic.net rebranded as Sonic, after acquiring sonic.com and the @sonic Twitter handle. [11]
In April 2015, the company partnered with AT&T to expand service, using fiber-to-the-node. Due to this partnership, Sonic customers connected via that service are required to comply with AT&T's upstream policies, and may be subject to government spying. Sonic customers can utilize a VPN to avoid AT&T policies, and Sonic requires a lawful court order for any information requested by law enforcement. [12]
In December 2018, Sonic announced a partnership with Eero—now owned by Amazon—creator of the first whole-home WiFi mesh system, to improve WiFi connectivity across the entire home. [13] [14]
Sonic offers a number of services including:
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the most commonly installed DSL technology, for Internet access.
A digital subscriber line access multiplexer is a network device, often located in telephone exchanges, that connects multiple customer digital subscriber line (DSL) interfaces to a high-speed digital communications channel using multiplexing techniques. Its cable internet (DOCSIS) counterpart is the cable modem termination system.
Bell Internet, originally called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the largest ISP in Canada.
iiNet Limited is an Australian internet service provider and telecommunications company that sells NBN plans, 4G and 5G Home Wireless Internet and services on its ULTRA Broadband Cable, FTTB and VDSL2 networks. It also sells mobile phone sim-only plans using the Vodafone network.
Internode Pty Ltd was an Australian Internet service provider (ISP) that provided NBN broadband services, business-class broadband access, web hosting, co-location, Voice over IP, and a variety of related services. Internode became part of TPG Telecom in July 2020. TPG initiated a closure of Internode business operations in December 2023, and began transitioning existing Internode customers to other TPG-owned brands.
A naked DSL, also known as standalone or dry loop DSL, is a digital subscriber line (DSL) without a PSTN service — or the associated dial tone. In other words, only a standalone DSL Internet service is provided on the local loop.
TransACT is the trading name of TransACT Capital Communications, an Australian telecommunications company based in Canberra which provides broadband internet access, fixed telephony, cable television services, and mobile phone services in Canberra and a subset of these services in Queanbeyan, throughout South-east New South Wales and in Victoria.
In the field of telecommunications, the concept of triple play service refers to the provision of three essential services — high-speed broadband Internet access, television, and latency-sensitive telephone services — all delivered over a single broadband connection. This approach emphasizes the convergence of multiple services by a single supplier, aiming to enhance user convenience and streamline service delivery.
Fiber to the x or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic cables are able to carry much more data than copper cables, especially over long distances, copper telephone networks built in the 20th century are being replaced by fiber.
Eftel Limited was an internet service provider and telecommunications provider in Australia, with approximately 120,000 active accounts. It was established in 1999. Eftel offers a range of services including: DSL and dial-up Internet access, web hosting and telephony services - to the retail, corporate and wholesale telecommunications markets.
Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s, almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
In an international context Denmark is viewed as a somewhat peculiar country when it comes to internet access. The former state owned telephone company TDC owns the entire last mile infrastructure in terms of copper telephone lines and the vast majority of the coaxial cable infrastructure as well. Even though the Danish telecommunications infrastructure is very heavily dominated by one company, Danish internet customers still enjoy fair prices and a wide availability of different next generation access internet connections in comparison with most other EU countries. Furthermore, TDCs de facto monopoly on last mile infrastructure has come under attack. In the last decade regional power companies have formed national business alliances aimed at implementing FTTH for private and business end users.
The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.
Internet in France has been available to the general public since 1994, but widespread Internet use did not take off until the mid-2000s. As of 31 December 2014, France had 26 million Internet broadband and high-speed connections on fixed networks. In 2014, 80.7% of French households had Internet access, while 19.3% did not.
Broadband Internet in Israel has been available since the late 1990s in theory, but it only became practically accessible to most customers in 2001. By 2008, Israel had become one of the few countries with developed broadband capabilities across two types of infrastructure—cable and DSL—reaching over 95% of the population. Actual broadband market penetration stands at 77%, ranked 7th in the world. In 2010, Israel was ranked 26th in The Economist's Digital Economy Rankings. In 2022, Israel was ranked first for digital quality of life by Surfshark.
In Romania, there are 18.8 million connections to the Internet. Romania's country code is .ro. The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states. There were over 600 000 domains registered under .ro at the end of 2012.
Towerstream Corporation is a Fixed Wireless Fiber Alternative company delivering high-speed Internet access to businesses. The company offers broadband services in 12 urban markets including New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay area, Miami, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Las Vegas-Reno, and the greater Providence area, where the company is headquartered. In 2014, Towerstream launched its On-Net fixed-wireless service offering On-Net building tenants access to dedicated, symmetrical high-speed Internet connectivity, with a premier SLA, at market-setting prices. Founded in 1999 by Philip Urso and Jeffrey Thompson (eFortress), Towerstream held its first public offering in January 2007 and traded on the NASDAQ Capital Markets under symbol TWER. In November 2016 the stock had declined in price, was delisted from NASDAQ, and moved to the over-the-counter market.
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. (TSI) is a Canadian residential, business, and wholesale telecommunications company based in Chatham, Ontario. In most of the country, it is a wholesale-network-access-based service provider and voice reseller, connecting its service to existing last mile networks from telecom carriers Bell Canada and Telus Communications, and cable carriers Rogers Communications, Cogeco Cable, Shaw and Vidéotron. However, in parts of rural southwestern Ontario, the service is provided over TekSavvy's own fixed wireless network. Recently they have also rolled out their own fibre optic network in parts of southwestern Ontario.
G.fast is a digital subscriber line (DSL) protocol standard for local loops shorter than 500 meters, with performance targets between 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s, depending on loop length. High speeds are only achieved over very short loops. Although G.fast was initially designed for loops shorter than 250 meters, Sckipio in early 2015 demonstrated G.fast delivering speeds over 100 Mbit/s at nearly 500 meters and the EU announced a research project.
AT&T Internet is an AT&T brand of broadband internet service. Previously, AT&T Internet was branded as U-verse Internet and bundled with U-verse TV, which was spun off into the newly independent DirecTV in 2021. AT&T Internet plans powered by fiber-optic cable use the AT&T Fiber brand.