Sonic CEO: I Welcome Being Regulated As A Common Carrier

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Apparently not all ISPs are worried about being regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. Sonic CEO Dane Jasper says he is actually "supportive of being regulated as a common carrier."

It is important to draw the distinction between regulation of the Internet, and regulation of carriers. The FCC’s order will disallow carriers from discriminating against sources of traffic that their customers choose to access via the Internet. This is common carriage at its core, and as a carrier, I am supportive of being regulated as a common carrier by the FCC.
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Would love to see Sonic expand. Would grab their internet over Comcast, but just too far out from their node; even with a double line, I think I'd struggle to hit 15 Mbps.
 
Yeah they're a glimpse of what the nation's infrastructure could've been today if we still had the regulation environment of pre-broadband, the pro-consumer stuff from the DSL days.
 
How surprising that the tune is so different when they aren't content providers as well as carriers. It was this conflict of interest, I think, that was one of the main factors for companies like Comcast trying to screw over other content providers.
 
Madoc said:
How surprising that the tune is so different when they aren't content providers as well as carriers. It was this conflict of interest, I think, that was one of the main factors for companies like Comcast trying to screw over other content providers.
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Yeah. But what a huge conflict of interest; "Hey, once we build the pipes, so long as we shovel any sort of crap down those pipes that we 'create', we can lock anyone else out!"
 
Has anyone seen a full copy of the final regulations yet?

If these guys are already almost entirely DSL, they were already operating under telecommunications rules. Plus with the regulatory changes they won't be able to advertise their service as broadband anymore. So... Yeah. They might want to hold off on supporting the whole kit and caboodle just yet.
 
Madoc said:
How surprising that the tune is so different when they aren't content providers as well as carriers. It was this conflict of interest, I think, that was one of the main factors for companies like Comcast trying to screw over other content providers.
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When the government has you by the balls, you are going to sing their tune. The government controls their fate are they going to pick a fight? Especially with a petty and vindictive one.
 
flashoverride said:
Has anyone seen a full copy of the final regulations yet?

If these guys are already almost entirely DSL, they were already operating under telecommunications rules. Plus with the regulatory changes they won't be able to advertise their service as broadband anymore. So... Yeah. They might want to hold off on supporting the whole kit and caboodle just yet.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...the-unlikely-success-of-californias-sonicnet/

While some other cities can also brag about gigabit access, in this Sonoma County town it costs only $69.95 a month.
...
Sonic's everyday 100 Mbps fiber offering costs just $39.95 a month, the same price Sonic used to charge for its 20 Mbps DSL connections
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jpm100 said:
When the government has you by the balls, you are going to sing their tune. The government controls their fate are they going to pick a fight? Especially with a petty and vindictive one.
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So the government has everyone by the balls that supports net neutrality? And only the big ISPs are free from such coercion?
 
I wish we had an ISP like Sonic up here in the Seattle area. Its really nice to see someone like the that CEO step up and say and do the right things.
 
If the government made a law specifically outlawing individual states creating nazi-style concentration camps, there would still be right-wingers crying "government over-stepping its boundaries!"
 
GearChoices said:
If the government made a law specifically outlawing individual states creating nazi-style concentration camps, there would still be right-wingers crying "government over-stepping its boundaries!"
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In what world do you live in?

Can I have some of what you are smoking?
 
Sonic really is small time though compared to other carriers. They got their whole start due to the deregulation forcing AT&T to give up control of their lines, and they did this as a telephone provider which allowed them to sneak into the DSL market. They got some neat technology lined up, VDSL2 although this is really only useful if you live close to a CO. Their fiber expansion is sexy, but slow as a fuck, if they had pockets like Google or Comcast then everyone in the SF Bay Area would have access to fiber by now. Plus their one of the few companies that state that "Bandwidth is cheap, it's setting up the infrastructure that's costly" which is why they don't have tiers of service except for Fiber (then it's 100Mbps or 1Gbps), nice of them to say $40 gets you "Up To" 20Mbps of DSL service plus a land line, and we will just let your distance from a CO determine your actual speed unlike AT&T who love to charge more for different speeds. How come people still use AT&T is actually quite shocking considering they're cheaper than AT&T plus you get phone service.

That said, I don't agree with their business decision on which markets to expand fiber into. They're basing it off who has their DSL service, which is fucking stupid because anyone who wants speed is going to have Comcast or something but would probably switch at the drop of a hat for Fiber if given the option.


And it's because of that as to why I'm looking to move on from them, the 5Mbps service I get is not exactly my cup of tea, I'm too far away for VDSL2, they can bring 2 lines to my house for $20 more, but if I'm spending $60/month for 10Mbps service I might as well jump onto a local cable provider for 100Mbps for $40/month for 12 months, and I'll
figure something out with the landline later (if I even want one anymore)
 
bsbllclown said:
I wish we had an ISP like Sonic up here in the Seattle area. Its really nice to see someone like the that CEO step up and say and do the right things.
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Sonic's a pretty good outfit to deal with.. In the SF Bay Area and California they have small a foot print when it comes to their coverage / it is not very big. Hopefully in time they can pick up where other major net providers refuse to go and see an up ticket in picking up new subscribers out here ...
I had Comcast in SF but moved out of the city and now live in place where Comcast refuses to install more hook ups to non wired Apartments, unless the building owner agree for them to pull more fiber to the building and newer boxes.
AT&T only wants me to shell out $$ for Uvers even though I would barely get1.5 mbs of them... silly thing is Sonic was able to get me 8-9 up and 1.5-3 down :| and to think it's coming from the same damn CO.
One thing to note Sonic refuses to throttle their traffic ... I actually get better streaming quality with Hulu , Netflix , Crunchyroll , Amazon prime and a few other digital content providers than I did with my old Comcast set up which I had 60-65 up and 9-12 down ...
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Money talks, my friend.

Money talks.
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Indeed it does. Which is why virtually the only businesses that oppose net neutrality are the major ISPs who see this as hurting their bottom lines mainly because they won't be able to monetize fast lanes. We can get into a million arguments about the role of government and corruption and coercion and all of that but this is the by far the salient issue.
 
heatlesssun said:
Indeed it does. Which is why virtually the only businesses that oppose net neutrality are the major ISPs who see this as hurting their bottom lines mainly because they won't be able to monetize fast lanes. We can get into a million arguments about the role of government and corruption and coercion and all of that but this is the by far the salient issue.
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Lets use Comcast as an example, guess what, Comcast didn't oppose net neutrality, now think very very hard and explain why a company like Comcast wouldn't oppose it.
 
darkstarcow said:
Lets use Comcast as an example, guess what, Comcast didn't oppose net neutrality, now think very very hard and explain why a company like Comcast wouldn't oppose it.
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The Time Warner merger is something that's going to be a lot easier to get done being pro net neutrality wouldn't you think? It's not like Comcast has been entirely consistent with the stance, the Netflix deal comes to mind.
 
darkstarcow said:
Lets use Comcast as an example, guess what, Comcast didn't oppose net neutrality, now think very very hard and explain why a company like Comcast wouldn't oppose it.
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They already agreed to follow open internet rules with the nbc universal buyout. Also, one of the areas that will not be made illegal for comcast is paid peering deals with companies like netflix. They are prevented from charging too much, and likely more than market rates, but they are still going to be paid.


As for this Sonic guy, he talks a good game but I sometimes wonder if part of the reason is the free advertisement by piggybacking his ISP's image onto the net neutrality issue.


His dsl service is as crippled as all dsl since you need to be close to the phone company starting point to make it work well, and his fiber footprint is virtually non existent in CA. He seems incredibly slow to expand and I have not heard a clear explanation as to why other than not wanting to fund the expansion with any debt. Is he worried that the large ISPs will take his weaker financial position to bury him with radically cheaper prices as punishment? I don't know why he is so gun shy.

Actually, I'd like to have a larger explanation about the financial constraints on expansions of fiber from all small fiber companies and municipalities. I heard some municipalities want to expand their fiber service, so they clearly have some capacity to, why is sonic so slow?
 
pavementeater said:
One thing to note Sonic refuses to throttle their traffic ... I actually get better streaming quality with Hulu , Netflix , Crunchyroll , Amazon prime and a few other digital content providers than I did with my old Comcast set up which I had 60-65 up and 9-12 down ...
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One major factor in this is that the non monopoly ISPs don't have their own content and CDNs and one of their major costs is actually interconnection of backhaul. As such they tend to be very open to hosting various CDNs caching boxes. The reality is that both the rackspace costs and power costs of hosting CDNs cache boxes is very minimal. Esp compared to switch rack costs and backhaul bandwidth in IXs. Its at least an order of magnitude cheaper to host local CDN cache boxes than additional switches and backhaul.

So what you see is that the smaller and new ISPs are very very open to hosting them. Esp considering that the smaller/new ISPs are the ones actually pushing speeds that make things like 4K really viable. Well that and the smaller/new ISPs are first connection companies with many viewing the necessity of bundling TV service more of a required annoyance than they reason for existing.
 
tybert7 said:
His dsl service is as crippled as all dsl since you need to be close to the phone company starting point to make it work well, and his fiber footprint is virtually non existent in CA. He seems incredibly slow to expand and I have not heard a clear explanation as to why other than not wanting to fund the expansion with any debt. Is he worried that the large ISPs will take his weaker financial position to bury him with radically cheaper prices as punishment? I don't know why he is so gun shy.
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Yes. Sonic is a rather small ISP over all (45m in revenues) and doesn't have large financial backing. They are trying to expand using cashflow instead of debt financing because of the inherent risks in using debt financing. With debt financing if they make a bad decision, it can have significant impact on their existing service and network. Also because they are smaller, it is harder for them to manage/get approval for a major infrastructure tear up (aka tearing up streets). As such they've been primarily focused on using existing above ground pole infrastructure for physical routing. This is for instance, why they are only expanding into a limited area of the SF Sunset district instead of the whole district.

Actually, I'd like to have a larger explanation about the financial constraints on expansions of fiber from all small fiber companies and municipalities. I heard some municipalities want to expand their fiber service, so they clearly have some capacity to, why is sonic so slow?
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There are two major considerations in deploying fiber. There is the capital investment costs and there is the right of way infrastructure. One thing you'll immediately notice is that the largest/most successful municipal fiber deployments have been done primarily by electrical utilities and primarily by electrical utilities that make extensive use of pole based infrastructure.

The reasons are two fold. The electrical utilities already have guaranteed rights of way to every premise within their foot print. And stringing fiber on poles is significantly cheaper and faster than laying fiber underground. To string pole fiber you need a spool truck, a cherry picker truck, and pole connectors. This typically means that per spool you are looking at 5-6 workers. And your speed limit is basically how fast you can put up the pool connectors to anchor the fiber bundle (and if you want to put a pre-splice on each pole) . Also you tend to have a rather minimal impact on traffic.

For underground fiber it gets much more complicated. For one, do you already have existing conduit underground with capabilities for an additional wiring bundle or are you going to have to dig. If you have to dig, your costs and approvals difficulty just went sky high! But even with existing conduit, its much more complex than poles. You have to have a spool truck. You have to have multiple leader crews to send pull leaders between access points. You have to have pulling truck to pull the leaders and fiber bundle back through the conduit. The process of connecting to a building is also much more complex. Instead of finding the nearest splice point and putting up fiber next the power lines to the building, you have to somehow get a leader into the building, likely through some complex conduit or dig a new conduit. Etc.

When you consider that the actual fiber bundles themselves are relatively cheap and the costs are almost completely on the installation side, the pole vs underground becomes a pronounced factor.

Sonic's main limitation is size and finances. Sonic simply doesn't have enough size to fund via cash flow the rate of expansion they or others likely want. At the same time, Sonic doesn't want to do massive debt financing of their new infrastructure. To do a google sized rollout you have looking at a couple hundred million dollars. If you look at something like the Chattanooga EPB Fiber rollout, that was on the order of $400-500 million. That's 10 years revenue for Sonic atm. Chattanooga EPB was able to do it because it was an offshoot of their smartgrid project (and hence a large portion of it was funded by secured government loans that EPB was able to secure as one of the most extensive and impressive examples of a smartgrid project). In fact, Chattanooga EPB was going to run the fiber throughout their system regardless of providing consumer fiber service. Now remember where I said the actual cost of the fiber in a fiber install was basically immaterial? It was a minor cost addition for EPB to run more fibers in the bundle or multiple bundles when their ran their smart grid fiber. IIRC, the additional cost to EPB for the additional fiber plus all the other infrastructure to deliver consumer fiber service was like $100 million on top of a ~$300-400 million project which is incredible value (esp since they've payed off that investment multiple times now!).
 
aaronspink said:
Yes. Sonic is a rather small ISP over all (45m in revenues) and doesn't have large financial backing. They are trying to expand using cashflow instead of debt financing because of the inherent risks in using debt financing. With debt financing if they make a bad decision, it can have significant impact on their existing service and network. Also because they are smaller, it is harder for them to manage/get approval for a major infrastructure tear up (aka tearing up streets). As such they've been primarily focused on using existing above ground pole infrastructure for physical routing. This is for instance, why they are only expanding into a limited area of the SF Sunset district instead of the whole district.



There are two major considerations in deploying fiber. There is the capital investment costs and there is the right of way infrastructure. One thing you'll immediately notice is that the largest/most successful municipal fiber deployments have been done primarily by electrical utilities and primarily by electrical utilities that make extensive use of pole based infrastructure.

The reasons are two fold. The electrical utilities already have guaranteed rights of way to every premise within their foot print. And stringing fiber on poles is significantly cheaper and faster than laying fiber underground. To string pole fiber you need a spool truck, a cherry picker truck, and pole connectors. This typically means that per spool you are looking at 5-6 workers. And your speed limit is basically how fast you can put up the pool connectors to anchor the fiber bundle (and if you want to put a pre-splice on each pole) . Also you tend to have a rather minimal impact on traffic.

For underground fiber it gets much more complicated. For one, do you already have existing conduit underground with capabilities for an additional wiring bundle or are you going to have to dig. If you have to dig, your costs and approvals difficulty just went sky high! But even with existing conduit, its much more complex than poles. You have to have a spool truck. You have to have multiple leader crews to send pull leaders between access points. You have to have pulling truck to pull the leaders and fiber bundle back through the conduit. The process of connecting to a building is also much more complex. Instead of finding the nearest splice point and putting up fiber next the power lines to the building, you have to somehow get a leader into the building, likely through some complex conduit or dig a new conduit. Etc.

When you consider that the actual fiber bundles themselves are relatively cheap and the costs are almost completely on the installation side, the pole vs underground becomes a pronounced factor.

Sonic's main limitation is size and finances. Sonic simply doesn't have enough size to fund via cash flow the rate of expansion they or others likely want. At the same time, Sonic doesn't want to do massive debt financing of their new infrastructure. To do a google sized rollout you have looking at a couple hundred million dollars. If you look at something like the Chattanooga EPB Fiber rollout, that was on the order of $400-500 million. That's 10 years revenue for Sonic atm. Chattanooga EPB was able to do it because it was an offshoot of their smartgrid project (and hence a large portion of it was funded by secured government loans that EPB was able to secure as one of the most extensive and impressive examples of a smartgrid project). In fact, Chattanooga EPB was going to run the fiber throughout their system regardless of providing consumer fiber service. Now remember where I said the actual cost of the fiber in a fiber install was basically immaterial? It was a minor cost addition for EPB to run more fibers in the bundle or multiple bundles when their ran their smart grid fiber. IIRC, the additional cost to EPB for the additional fiber plus all the other infrastructure to deliver consumer fiber service was like $100 million on top of a ~$300-400 million project which is incredible value (esp since they've payed off that investment multiple times now!).
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Why bother running fiber underground in the first place then? I live in a city, Los Angeles, and there are electric poles everywhere. I guess running cables underground makes them less susceptible to... I don't know, wear and tear, but then they string fiber across oceans and are able to build the casings strong enough to withstand the elements.

If there are right of way issues with using the electric poles to run fiber, remove those barriers immediately and let any ISP that wants to use the poles to string fiber do so. I don't know if I'd trust the power company here, southern california edison to deploy anything though. They go out of their way to promote some crap tiered pricing strategy to charge more money for less electricity usage. They are like the electric version of comcast. But if epb was really able to pay for the money spent on fiber/smart grid deployment so soon, I don't understand why other power companies are not chomping at the bit to deploy their own fiber systems.

We have time warner cable here, and though they have updated their pricing and speeds, it still tops out at 300mbps for around 65 dollars per month. That does not sound too bad, until you factor in things like a refusal to use caching boxes from companies like netflix because they want to be paid for more data flowing into their network by their own customer requests. I'd prefer to pay a similar amount for gbps service without all the interconnect games. That last seems like it would be a bigger factor in accelerating the availability of 4k streaming and beyond.

I want more than 4k. I want:

4k @ 48-60 fps
that dolby vision high dynamic range video content after proper tvs arrive
higher bitrate streams for less compressed 4k
Increased color and contrast (may be similar to the dolby vision or some other equivalent)

All of these things will radically increase the downstream capacity needed, and I want want to be tied to an ISP that will now put the breaks or start bitching about how hard it is to deliver that traffic.
 
tybert7 said:
Why bother running fiber underground in the first place then? I live in a city, Los Angeles, and there are electric poles everywhere. I guess running cables underground makes them less susceptible to... I don't know, wear and tear, but then they string fiber across oceans and are able to build the casings strong enough to withstand the elements.
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Depends on which city and where in that city. There are large parts of LA under underground utilities. Likewise, the majority of SF also uses underground utilities.

If there are right of way issues with using the electric poles to run fiber, remove those barriers immediately and let any ISP that wants to use the poles to string fiber do so. I don't know if I'd trust the power company here, southern california edison to deploy anything though. They go out of their way to promote some crap tiered pricing strategy to charge more money for less electricity usage. They are like the electric version of comcast. But if epb was really able to pay for the money spent on fiber/smart grid deployment so soon, I don't understand why other power companies are not chomping at the bit to deploy their own fiber systems.
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Both PGE and CalEd went with a much lower performance wireless solution for their smartgrid rollouts.

There are two major issues for municipal utilities rolling out fiber. Financing and legal restrictions. Chattanooga EPB was one of the first movers and was largely able to pay the financing via federally backed loans (which were all paid back ahead of time). Without the federally backed loans, Chattanooga EPB would of had a significantly harder time getting financing. In addition, by being one of the first, Chattanooga EPB was ahead of the curve of the monopoly ISPs anti-competitive lobbying. Largely as a result of Chattanooga EPB beating the monopoly ISPs in all the court challenges, the monopoly ISPs changed strategy and started buying laws at the state level to prevent rollouts similar to Chattanooga EPB Fiber.

These laws are what the FCC overruled in two cases (Chattanooga EPB Fiber expansion and the NC municipal fiber expansion) on the same day as the Net Neutrality ruling. These laws now in force in many states basically prevent or present significant barriers to municipal utilities from doing that LUS Fiber (the first one to do it) and Chattanooga EPB did. It also prevents newly formed Municipal utility companies from doing fiber as well.

We have time warner cable here, and though they have updated their pricing and speeds, it still tops out at 300mbps for around 65 dollars per month. That does not sound too bad, until you factor in things like a refusal to use caching boxes from companies like netflix because they want to be paid for more data flowing into their network by their own customer requests. I'd prefer to pay a similar amount for gbps service without all the interconnect games. That last seems like it would be a bigger factor in accelerating the availability of 4k streaming and beyond.
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I currently find it funny that the pricing Tiers at EPB Fiber are 57.99 for 100/100 and 69.99 for 1000/1000! Literally $12 for 900 mb/s increase! Hey but at least you have the option of 300mb service. Here in SF, it tops out at 150mb/s and costs $100+ per month!

The EPB Fiber pricing tiers also starkly points out that the costs are not in the actual bandwidth but in the basic connection.
 
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