Sonic.net wants to bring high-speed Internet to SF

Here's a David and Goliath item, with a twist.

Sonic.net, a small telecom company based in Santa Rosa, wants to bring high-speed broadband services to San Francisco homes and businesses, putting it in direct competition with giant AT&T, which has wanted to do the same for lo, these many years.

What makes them potential allies is that both have to get permission to install utility boxes on San Francisco streets, a Sisyphean labor, as AT&T will be the first to tell you.

On Friday, Sonic.net filed an application with the city's Department of Public Works to install 188 boxes, measuring 5-by-4-by-2 feet, beginning next year. Should the application pass muster, Sonic.net's all-fiber network will deliver phone and Internet service (television may come later) at speeds considerably faster than AT&T's U-verse service, for $39.95 a month.

However, it may get stuck in the same quagmire as AT&T, whose planned rollout of 768 similarly sized boxes has been halted by a lawsuit filed by community groups seeking a time-consuming environmental impact report, despite the Board of Supervisor's green light last summer.

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"It's an interesting twist," acknowledges Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper. "While the debate has centered around AT&T and its boxes, there hasn't been any discussion about what happens if someone else wants to install boxes, too."

While waiting for the disposition of the AT&T lawsuit, Sonic.net is building out a similar all-fiber network in Sebastopol, unhindered. The company, co-founded by Jasper in 1994 when he was a computer science student at Santa Rosa Junior College, has 60,000 subscribers, most of them in California, receiving its copper-wire DSL service (over AT&T lines).

"There is a huge demand in San Francisco for higher bandwidth services, and fiber is the only long-term way to meet this demand," he said.

Given the fact that the company's all-fiber network will bring "the fastest and cheapest" broadband service to the city, Jasper says he thinks the chances of overcoming the obstacles experienced by his larger rival are "pretty good."

Daylight robbery: You may have already heard about Amazon.com's latest sleazy move. If not, here's a blog post from Northern California Independent Booksellers Association President Hut Landon.

"Although Amazon will be forced to collect sales tax in California next year, the online behemoth is trying to maximize its unfair competitive advantage this holiday season with a new app designed to rob local businesses of sales.

"The Price Check app allows users to go into stores, scan price information on items offered in those stores, check it against Amazon's price, and purchase it from Amazon on the spot. Amazon introduced the new 'spyware' by offering up to a $5 credit on any sales that came through the app - paying people to use local stores as showrooms for Amazon and then stealing sales away.

"This is Amazon's latest effort to expand its market at the expense of local businesses that nurture and support neighborhoods and communities throughout the state - the same businesses that collect sales taxes that fund our schools, police and firefighters, state and local services and more."

The app has provoked outrage in other quarters, too, including from Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "Amazon's promotion - paying consumers to visit small businesses and leave empty-handed - is an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities."

Amazon's response: "The goal of the Price Check app is to make it as easy as possible for customers to access product information, pricing information, and customer reviews, just as they would on the Web."