ISPs/high speed access in Sonoma County

ME dugan at passwall.com
Sat Jun 16 00:29:00 PDT 2001


On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Jeff Miller wrote:
> It's likely I'll be relocating to Sonoma County in the next few months,
> and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts or suggestions on ISPs or esp. 
> on high speed access.  My possible destinations include Sebastopol, Santa
> Rosa, possibly Cotati or Penngrove. 

There are several options available in many parts of Sonoma County, but
you should pre-check availability at the location you wish to move before
making assumptions. Even places across the street from one another may go
from offering xDSL at speed up to 6.0Mbps to not having any xDSL work at
all. (Wired ADSL is available in many places of Petaluma, Cotati, Rohnert
Park, and Santa Rosa. Sebastapol is filled with people that don't really
want growth, new buildings, expansion, and may not have so much DSL
development. It has more oif a small-town feel and a more varied
population politically with many people more active in Sebastapol than
other cities. I don't know about DSL or cable modem access there, but
would not expect too much. I am not sure about Penngrove, but would
expect it to be as probable for xDSL availablity as Sebastapol.)

A few options:
For the most part PacBell is the only wired Data Link layer xDSL provider
"in town" even though there are one or two other data providers of xDSL
for businesses but are too pricy for residential.

Broadlink offers WDSL, and sonic.net can offer itself as an ISP over t hat
or PacBell DSL.

Once you have an xDSL provider available, you may often choose an ISP to
carry service through that xDSL provider. Earthlink, AT&T (I think) and
Sonic.net provide ISP service over other's xDSL lines and can charge you
separately. PacBell can also offer you ISP service as well as DSL access.
(These are not the only ones that offer high speed access. See links at
end for more info.)

I am preferrential to using sonic.net instead of PacBell for my ISP as I
have had nothing but problems with them even setting up my telephones
every time I have moved. A friend of mine has PacBell for DSl and ISP and
clais it takes for ever to get PacBell to fix some of the problems with
the ISP side of things and billing. Sonic also offer shell access to a
linux box, web space and better responses to fixing more advanced requests
than PacBell. (I do use PacBell for my wired ADSL, but sonic.net for my
ISP over the PacBell DSL link: $29 (PacBell) + $20 (Sonic.net). Sonic has
also been more Linux inclusive than the "big" ISPs (PacBell, etc.)

A neighbor has and uses Earthlink as an ISP over PacBell's DSL and they
like it. Dont know anyone that has or uses AT&T as an ISP with xDSL around
here.

I also can't remember anyone that has or uses WDSL around here.

ISDN is too expensive and slow for your dollar and is not as popular as
xDSL when it is available.

Cable modems are also avilable in Petaluma and parts of Santa Rosa (I
think) but not so much in Rohnert Park and Cotati. (Not sure on this since
my data is about 2 years old.) Rohnert Park's cable system provider
claimed they would "have cable modems later this year" each year that I
called them starting 5 years ago, but never made them available AFAIK.
Someone said they were being bought out a while back and the new owners
were going to start offering cable modems, but after several years of
"later this year", I gave up on them.

Petaluma had cable modems but there was an issue in the city council where
the city wanted to impose a tax on all users, but the cable provider said
they would not include it in the bill, but instead would pass a bil to
them to be paid directly to the city and leave it up to the city to
collect the money and taxes. Bad blood between the city of Petaluma and
the cable company there has created rifts. Cable modems are/were also not
available in all parts of Petaluma, someone gave me spotty information
suggesting they were looking into terminating new cable modem service in
petalums or eliminating it, but I am not sure where that went or if it was
just an untrue rumor.

I understand Santa Rosa has many more places with cable modem acces and
ADSL, SDSL, and WDSL available.

PacBell offers different kinds of DSL connections. Their standard
residential is something like 384/1.544Mbps download and 128/384kbps 
upload (ranges of throughput based on distance, line quality, use,
etc.) Just the DSL part is about $29/month I think and ISP costs added to
that from $10 to $30 /month.

Another one for ~$200 if available at your location is 1.544/6.0Mbps DSL
for DL and 128/384 upload.

Higher speeds are also available from T1 through to DS3 and beyond but
they will cost much more and are often targeted more for business
customers.

Anyone else have suggestions and thoughts on local ISPs, and high speed
access? (I do not work for any of these ISPs, or gain anything if you use
them.)

Must still stress:
Check with the appropriate data-link provider and the address of te place
you wish to move before you move in.
Make arrangements to install the product about 3 weeks ahead of time and
earlier if possible. PacBell has been as far as 6 weeks behind in DSL
installation, but might be doing better now.

Useful links on this:
http://www.sonic.net/sales/index.shtml
http://www.pacbell.com/DSL (note availability link top right, but you may
 need to call them and give them an address since most availability
 systems at pacbell either use vague generalizations based on city name,
 or your actual phone number at the residence - which you won't have if
 you have not moved in yet.

http://www.searchsonoma.com/computers/providers/

Hope this helps...

-ME

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     Systems Department Operating Systems Analyst for the SSU Library




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