A guide to ISPs in San Francisco
The state of internet access as of December 2013
I recently moved to San Francisco and had to figure out for myself what all the ISP options are. I was excited to see that there are actually a lot more options than in New York. Reddit seems to love sonic.net, but it looks like Monkeybrains and Webpass might be better for the lucky few who can use them. Here’s the detailed breakdown:
Comcast
Connection. With cable, you share your connection with everyone on your block. If you’re the only one using it, it’s blazingly fast. If you’re not, it’s not. Upload is extremely slow no matter what.
Cost. They start out at the perfectly reasonable $30. That rises to $45 after 6 months, and then who knows what after 12 months. See boiling the frog.
Customer service. Not well-reputed.
AT&T
AT&T offers a similar deal with DSL instead of cable, the only difference maybe being that AT&T’s customer service reputation is even worse than Comcast’s. It might be a reasonably good deal, but except for their logo looking like the Death Star, AT&T is not very interesting. Let’s move right along.
Webpass
If you live in one of a dozen or so magical highrises, you get to have 100 MBPS internet delivered directly via ethernet. That’s not a typo: 100 MBPS. Unfortunately, I am consigned to slowly buffer my YouTube videos on one of the more plebian ISPs that are an order of magnitude slower.
If your building has Webpass, you need to just go for it. Sure it’s $50 a month, but your internet will be faster than the NSA’s.
Connection. Mind-blowing
Cost. $50/mo.
Customer service. Seems good.
Monkeybrains
Yelp is obsessed with them, apparently they’re fast and have great customer service at reasonable prices. But they don’t accept new sign-ups in December and early January, which honestly is a little odd to me. Unfortunately this meant I had to exclude them from consideration.
Cost. Better
Connection. Faster
Customer service. Stronger
FreedomPop
Crazy cheap internet via Sprint’s mobile network, but you may get what you pay for in terms of service.
Connection. Sprint LTE. Seems to be somewhat fast but can be spotty. Probably amazing if it works for you or amazingly annoying if it doesn’t.
Cost. $100 for the router, then $19/mo for 10 GB at the highest speed.
Customer service. There were lots of complaints online about their customer service, and people also often feel like they get stuck with fees they were trying to avoid. Caveat umptor.
Sonic.net Fusion
The Cadillac of ISPs, sonic.net is widely loved for its service and speed, but these come at a price. Connaisseurs will appreciate the static IP.
Connection. 20 MBPS down, 1 up. By DSL standards that is blazing fast.
Cost. $59/mo, no installation fee, no intro rates.
Customer service. People on the internet seem to like it. You are on AT&T’s pipes, but at least sonic.net will deal with their wretched customer service on your behalf.
TL;DR
Awesomest ISPs are:
- Webpass. Caveat: Only available in select highrises.
- Monkeybrains. Caveat: No signups in December. Restricted service area.
- Sonic.net Fusion. Caveat: $60/mo.
Honorable mention goes to FreedomPop for being insanely cheap.
Coda. I ended up with Sonic.net, but only because Webpss and Monkeybrains weren’t available. If you’re shopping for ISPs, I hope this helped you get things sorted out!
