1 Gbps fiber for $70—in America? Yup.

[n2doc]

By Nate Anderson | Published about 21 hours ago


American ISPs have convinced us that Internet access is expensive—getting speeds of 100Mbps will set most people back by more than $100 a month, assuming the service is even available. Where I live in Chicago, Comcast's 105Mbps service goes for a whopping $199.95 ("premium installation" and cable modem not included). Which is why it was so refreshing to see the scrappy California ISP Sonic.net this week roll out its new 1Gbps, fiber-to-the-home service… for $69.99 a month.

Sonic.net has been around since 1994, selling DSL service in California, but it has recently expanded into fiber; the company has even secured the contract to manage Google's own 1Gbps fiber network that will connect 800+ faculty homes at Stanford University.

Sonic.net's new approach to broadband involves stringing its own fiber lines to homes and offering bargain-basement pricing; indeed, the new 1Gbps offering is the same price as the company's earlier bonded 40Mbps DSL offering (in which two phones lines each provide 20Mbps of bandwidth to a home). The price even includes home phone service.

Is this really a sustainable model? After all, Comcast offers 1.5Mbps service for a list price of $40; Sonic.net's new offering is more than 600x faster at only twice the price.

Dane Jasper, Sonic.net's CEO, tells me that the new fiber-to-the-home deployment is a trial and will reach about 700 homes when complete. "Honestly, only as those wrap up will we have a complete picture of the economic model," he says. "But I believe that fast service for a low cost is possible."

more
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/1gbps-fiber-for-70in-america-yup.ars

[Edweird]

1. Awesome. Fast cheap internet + new jobs running fiber. Win/Win.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. That would have been a great economic stimulus project. n/t

[Edweird]

10. Indeed. Sadly, however, we are saddled with the 'Anti-FDR'.

[Pharaoh]

2. Holy shit!

Can't imagine why I'd ever need a gig a second. But I imagine technology will create some mind boggling applications for it.

[underpants]

14. You would if you were a business processing orders

internet access is 12 times slower and 3 times more expensive than anywhere else in the world.

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. This is an example of a business opportunity that the government could do to make money.

$70 a month for internet? That's too much.
That's about what I pay for cable broadband and it's too much.

The goverment already owns all these rights of way. They can lay this fiber and provide the service for less.

[Xithras]

4. Wow, I didn't realize that Sonic was still around.

Sonic was the last, and best, Dialup/ISDN provider I ever had. I only dropped them because AT&T rolled out DSL in my area, and Sonic didn't support them at the time.

I hadn't heard the name in years and just assumed that they'd folded up shop like most of the other regional ISP's when the Dotcom boom imploded. Good to hear they're still around, and I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with this. For $70, I'll take two!

[hunter]

5. Comcast, the big television networks, and AT&T need to die.

Let's do this.

[obxhead]

6. I dream of having 1.5Mbps speeds.

In fact we're about to drop $500 a month to get it. x(

[katnapped]

8. Stock holders won't stand for it

Either they'll have to trim speeds or raise prices or both.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. These are not the numbers stockholders look at. They look at PROFITS. -nt

[Gregorian]

9. A couple of things

Won't the bandwidth of the website that is being accessed be the limiting factor? I've had a fast connection, and there are some Youtube videos that stream very fast, and others that are dead slow, just as an example.

Also, good luck in any place other than metro areas. And they aren't going to be digging hundreds of miles of trenches to get this to these outlying areas.

My guess is 4G will be the first big leap that satisfies the internet world.

But I know next to nothing about this stuff.

[jtrockville]

15. Yes, but that's not the only factor.

For example: I could be streaming a movie on Netflix and uploading the family photo album to Flickr, while my husband is streaming a baseball game from MLB.com, while my son is watching "The Office" from hulu.com

The 3 of us could be transferring to/from 4 different websites on the same connection. So we couldn't exceed an individual site's limit but we could connect to multiple sites.

But you're right: rural areas, and probably even some suburbs won't likely see FTTP/FTTH for a while, if ever.

[Gregorian]

17. Oh yeah.

It's nice living the single life in my bunker. Just barely able to pull in a cell tower signal with my parabolic grid and amplifier.

I use the internet primarily for streaming audio from stations all over the world. I've been doing it since 1996. It's great to be living in the middle of nowhere and rocking out to MIT's radio station.

[Hutzpa]

11. Now that's what I call music

paper cuts, paper cuts, create untold amount of phone companies that can
make the big three obsolete.

Love it.

[NYC Liberal]

12. Wait until they put a data cap on it. Call me cynical. nt

[jtrockville]

16. Sonic.net gets excellent reviews at DSLReports.com

http://www.dslreports.com/comments/896

Sonic.net gets a "Gold" award at DSLReports (aka BroadbandReports) based on customer reviews. The only other wire-line internet providers with a "Gold" award are:

Verizon (for their FiOS fiber service), and
TekSavvy (a Canadian provider).