Sonic

Sonic is a DSL internet provider operating out of the state of California. It’s the eighth-largest DSL provider in the nation with service available to nearly 3 million customers. Sonic has also started offering its service through fiber and copper lines, expanding its service to meet the growing demand for fiber service. Though fiber availability through Sonic is relatively limited at this time, with about four-hundred thousand customers having access to Sonic fiber, they are actively in the process of expanding coverage.

Sonic began as a way to provide internet access to Santa Rosa Junior College. Founded by Dane Jasper and Scott Doty, they wanted to provide DSL internet service in a time when most people hadn’t even heard of the internet, let alone had uses it. In 1994, Sonic expanded its service to provide internet to customers who were not staff or students at Santa Rosa Junior College and have continued to expand with service now in nearly 500 zip codes stretching up the California coastline with particularly high coverage in Northern California. The company even services major metropolitan areas such as Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Sonic has created an interesting space for itself in the ISP market. With a focus on user privacy and anonymity, denying multiple orders from the U.S. government to provide user data in regards to torrent downloads and specific users’ involvement with Wikileaks and Tor.

Sonic’s DSL coverage is the backbone of its internet service though they are trying to change that. In 2015, Sonic partnered with AT&T to increase its fiber-to-the-node access, increasing speeds as a result. Beyond that, Sonic has begun to install its own truly fiber lines allowing customers in select areas to reach up to one thousand Mbps, a speed that was previously unattainable. Alongside internet service, Sonic also offers a number of options in the home, offering home phone service and partnering with Dish Network to provide television.

Sonic has maintained a reputation as not only a company that delivers a reliable high-speed connection to its customers but also a company that stands by its ethics. Both Dane Jasper and Scott Doty have spoken up on numerous occasions to combat the ever-growing lack of privacy on the web. They have implemented policies that reflect this. In 2011, they reduced the amount of time that they store user data to just two weeks in the face of an ever-growing tide of legal requests for its users’ data. That same year, Sonic alongside Google fought a court order to hand over email addresses who had contacted and had a correspondence with Tor developer and Wikileaks contributor Jacob Applebaum. When asked why, CEO Dane Jasper responded that it was “rather expensive, but the right thing to do.”

Sonic has made a habit of doing the right thing, both for its customers and the larger world. It’s a conscientious company that delivers on what is promised and goes the extra mile for its subscribers.