Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Internet and Telecommunication |
Founded | September 1994 |
Founder |
|
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 legal requests for users' data, 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 will not be participating in the so-called "six strikes" plan, in which major US internet service providers 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 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have not invited small, independent ISPs to participate. [10]
In late 2014, Sonic.net rebranded as Sonic, after acquiring sonic.com and @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 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. [12]
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. [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.
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.
Netspace was one of Australia's major Internet service providers.
Internode Pty Ltd is an Australian Internet service provider (ISP) that provides 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.
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.
Covad Communications Company, also known as Covad Communications Group, was an American provider of broadband voice and data communications. By Q3 2006, the company had 530,000 subscribers, and ranked as the 16th largest ISP in the United States. Covad was acquired by U.S. Venture Partners, who in 2010 announced a three-way merger of MegaPath, Covad, and Speakeasy, creating a single Managed Services Local Exchange Carrier (MSLEC), providing voice and internet services; the new company was named MegaPath.
The 21st Century Network (21CN) programme is the data and voice network transformation project, under way since 2004, of the UK telecommunications company BT Group plc. It was intended to move BT's telephone network from the AXE/System X Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) system. As well as switching over the PSTN, BT planned to deliver many additional services over their new data network, such as on-demand interactive TV services.
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.
Uni-DSL (UDSL) in telecommunications is a digital subscriber line (DSL) marketing buzzword developed by Texas Instruments which would provide bit rates of at least 200 Mbit/s in aggregate on the downstream and upstream paths. UDSL is backwards compatible with all discrete multitone modulation (DMT) standards.
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.
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.
StarNet is a Moldovan Internet service provider. The company provides Internet services via ADSL and FTTB
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.