When we moved to our present Bay Area house in 2010, it looked shrewd—given our reliance online for our work—to get DSL service and cable Internet, to ensure a connection in all but the worst of conditions. We’d one option for cable: Comcast, which is under no duty to share its lines or facilities that are essential. But because of different rules regulating copper-line connections, we’d more than one option for DSL. And rather than send cash to AT&T, a firm that’s earned widespread contempt— most recently, for its eagerness to turn its customers over ’ information to the authorities’s pervading-surveil maw—we selected for a trustworthy choice.

Our DSL comes from a small firm called Sonic. It’s an independent in an industry controlled by a cable-telephone cartel ill-famed for customer disservice, greed, and control -freakery. Sonic is competitive and progressive in great methods, expanding its footprint by providing exceptional service at a reasonable cost. It’s (from firsthand experience) a true dedication to customer service. And, representing the civil libertarian beliefs of its creator and CEO, Dane Jasper, it’s the anti-AT&T as it pertains to security and privacy.

Sonic gets a perfect score for shielding users’ secrecy from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We ’re not attempting to help people evade the law,” Jasper says. “We Are attempting to protect the secrecy of our customers that are lawful.”

Sonic additionally fought back when an user’s advice was subpoenaed by the authorities during its on-going investigation of WikiLeaks—“so he’d have a chance to fight with it,” says Jasper.

Inside the phone company’s facilities, Sonic co-finds its own gear like other DSL opponents, effectively letting the copper lines. For the small percent of customers that are Sonic whose set up demands the use of AT&T’s central office electronic equipment— Sonic equipment is being used by most customers on both ends of the conection—Sonic supplies a virtual private network service at no additional cost.
The vast majority have some form of DSL, which uses the copper cables from the conventional phone system. But improvements in technology have given a means to offer more connection speed than was accessible on DSL a decade past to businesses like Sonic.

The high speed information includes a wired phone line—a type of “double play” in telecom parlance that’s just $60 a month plus taxes and various fees. A single-line set up is $40 a month but in an excellent place, is fast. (Sonic has a deal with DirecTV to offer a modest reduction on the satellite supplier’s service). Jasper’s aim is to offer super fast fiber, gigabit-level connections, plus telephone for the base cost that is $40 as broadly as potential.*

Sonic and Jasper aren’t the noncartel opposition in the state, though the collective independent footprint is dwarfed by the telecom giants’ facilities. Though their info speeds can’t usually stay informed about wired connections, there are many wireless ISPs. And, obviously, Google is a tremendous competition to the entrenched telecoms in the few cities.

I’ll stick with them, if Sonic never brings its most rapid connections to our address. It feels significant to conduct business with firms that believe in doing the right thing.