Haha, not bothering to explain the wired Internet situation. Short version: You probably should get Sonic.net.
The dominant companies are AT&T and Comcast. I hate them both, but I hate AT&T more, because of their poor customer service and slow speeds and high prices and defective software. In much of Europe, 6Mbps is not considered broadband. In the San Francisco Bay Area, 6Mbps is the standard.
If you're stuck in an area with AT&T, and you're unable or unwilling to deal with Comcast, then you should use Sonic.net. They use AT&T phone lines, but their business model is based on Free.fr. I'm hoping that the more customers they get, the quicker they can get around to installing fiber in my neighborhood, like they said they would 2 years ago.
And then there are various other, small Internet providers. In select neighborhoods of San Francisco, you can get Monkeybrains fixed wireless. In select apartment buildings, you can get Webpass fiber to the premises. If you want cable without Comcast for some reason, there's Astound.
That's about it for San Francisco, unless you're a business spending loads of money. Also, one neighborhood each of Palo Alto and Sebastopol have test runs of fiber from Google and Sonic.net, respectively. I don't know what else is available in the rest of the bay area.
Moved to San Francisco two weeks ago (Mission District), decided to go with Sonic.net and have been very satisfied thus far.
Getting 16 down 1 up for $40/month, great customer service (always with a human being) and no long fixed-term contracts (you can cancel at any time at no extra cost).
Whether it's Sonic.net or Moneybrain or Webpass, I'm just glad there's a lot of great alternatives to the big (evil) players.
The dominant companies are AT&T and Comcast. I hate them both, but I hate AT&T more, because of their poor customer service and slow speeds and high prices and defective software. In much of Europe, 6Mbps is not considered broadband. In the San Francisco Bay Area, 6Mbps is the standard.
If you're stuck in an area with AT&T, and you're unable or unwilling to deal with Comcast, then you should use Sonic.net. They use AT&T phone lines, but their business model is based on Free.fr. I'm hoping that the more customers they get, the quicker they can get around to installing fiber in my neighborhood, like they said they would 2 years ago.
And then there are various other, small Internet providers. In select neighborhoods of San Francisco, you can get Monkeybrains fixed wireless. In select apartment buildings, you can get Webpass fiber to the premises. If you want cable without Comcast for some reason, there's Astound.
That's about it for San Francisco, unless you're a business spending loads of money. Also, one neighborhood each of Palo Alto and Sebastopol have test runs of fiber from Google and Sonic.net, respectively. I don't know what else is available in the rest of the bay area.