please recommend good internet service - besides Sonic

Any suggestions for good but inexpensive internet service alone, or internet and phone together?
Can't afford to pay more than $55-60/month for both.

I have Sonic, but am moving soon and they told me that they could not provide the same service in my new location. (although it is only 5 minutes away from where I live now). Instead they have offered me another service which costs more per month and will give me phone service only through the internet - which means if my internet connection goes down my phone is gone too.

I'm not happy with this - i use ethernet and my phone is a landline. I don't want to pay more for a phone that requires wireless.

Would really appreciate hearing about any other options, especially from people who feel they are getting good service and reliable high speed internet.

I have liked Sonic, but don't like this new service they are offering.
Thanks!!

You are not alone. We reluctantly pay $87/month to cable giant just for internet & internet-based landline. In January, we moved into home on west side of SEB, just inside city limits. Hoped for the affordable Sonic deal for hi-speed internet, but the nice folks explained it was not available in our neighborhood. It's my understanding they are slowing expanding their state-of-the-art infrastructure. Every couple months, I check on things but no positive change yet. We are thinking of dropping phone line to save the expense, as we rarely use it, and of course it's useless during power outage. We have to pay the premium for internet, as our primarily home-based business depends on reliable high-speed connections for two people.

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Posted in reply to the post by qidancing:

Any suggestions for good but inexpensive internet service alone, or internet and phone together?
Can't afford to pay more than $55-60/month for both.

I have Sonic, but am moving soon and they told me that they could not provide the same service in my new location. ...

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I had terrible experiences with customer service from sonic and from their installer.
Probably 10 hours of hassling and still not sure what's going on with them.
If anyone knows how to call a person there of intelligence and authority, I'd appreciate it.
Sonic is the local way to go if you have endless patience and don't care about the cost or service.
Your neighborhood and experience may be better than mine.

AT&T was okay after they ran new lines on my street.
I tried to change to sonic to save money but don't know if it ever worked.
The hassle was unbelievable.
In the end I wound up paying double and still don't know how to correct it.
I hate to say comcast, but that is the only one I haven't tried and I think that's where I'm going next...

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Posted in reply to the post by AJL:

I hate to say comcast, but that is the only one I haven't tried and I think that's where I'm going next...

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Ahhhhh! AJL - please, you are supposed to say "they who shall remain nameless." While averting your eyes. At least that's what we do at my place.

A few quick comments:

I, and the vast majority of users who have posted on WaccoBB have always received exemplary customer service from Sonic.net.

:burningmad:

Most unfortunately, Sonic could not deliver more than 6 Mbs internet service to my house so I had to switch to "they who shall remain nameless". I have to say, that aside from tons snail mail spam, I have gotten excellent speed (around 100Mbs download!) at a good price ($40ish) and even good support. But they are still evil!

I have dropped my landline altogether and just use cell. Yes, cell towers can go down in an emergency, I suppose, but disruptions can happen to landlines, too. Cell towers have backup power supplies.

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...7_11-59-42.png

You can also have you own backup power supply! I have something similar to this. Comes in very handy for jump starting your car (don't need long jumper cables or another car!), Charging your phone while camping or at festivals or power outage with the USB power port, and plugging in anything anywhere! Highly recommended! :waccosun:

We have a gizmo that allows you get excellent cell coverage in your home over your wifi connection. And IOS 9 promises to allow you to make "phone calls" over wifi natively.

This article about Sonic.net was just posted yesterday on Slate.com:

This Might Be the Best Internet Service Provider in the U.S.

When we moved to our current Bay Area home in 2010, it seemed wise—given our reliance on the Internet for our work—to get both cable Internet and DSL service, to ensure a connection in all but the worst of circumstances. We had one choice for cable: Comcast, which is under no obligation to share its lines or central facilities. But because of different rules governing copper-line connections, we had more than one choice for DSL. And rather than send money to AT&T, a company that has earned widespread contempt—notably, most recently, for its eagerness to turn over its customers’ data to the government’s pervasive-surveillance maw—we opted for a more trustworthy alternative.

Our DSL comes from a small company called Sonic, based north of San Francisco. It’s an independent in an industry dominated by a cable-phone cartel notorious for greed, customer disservice, and control-freakery. Sonic is innovative and aggressive in good ways, expanding its footprint by providing excellent service at a fair price. It has (from first-hand experience) a genuine commitment to customer service. And, reflecting the civil-libertarian beliefs of its founder and CEO, Dane Jasper, it is the anti-AT&T when it comes to privacy and security.

Sonic consistently gets a perfect score from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for protecting users’ privacy. Unlike most Internet service providers, ...

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