We Believe in Net Neutrality and Open Internet
Introduction
Sonic believes in net neutrality and an open internet, and has always stood for, practiced, and advocated for the principles of an open and equal internet for all.
We believe that our customers choose Sonic with the understanding that we will simply deliver their traffic without inspection, modification or artificial limitations.
The federal government’s repeal of Title II classification and the 2010 FCC Open Internet Order has dismantled bans on blocking, throttling, and prioritizing content; paving the way for service providers to impose performance limits, prioritize content of their choosing, and monetize traffic throughout, all at the expense of citizen’s fair and open access to the rich spectrum of content and information available on the internet.
Instead of banning these practices, the FCC now requires ISPs to publicly disclose network management practices on a “publicly available, easily accessible website” or at the FCC’s ISP Transparency Disclosures Portal at https://www.fcc.gov/isp-disclosures.
While these practices are not banned, Sonic is proud to continue supporting the principles of net neutrality and provide our customers with an open internet experience unburdened by cost-cutting, performance impacting network management practices, monetization of access or priority for content providers, censorship of legal content, or sharing of any customer information.
In accordance with the 2018 FCC Restoring Internet Freedom Order and subsequent repeal of net neutrality principles, Sonic is happy to disclose continued adherence principles of an open and equal internet as compliant with the RIF “Transparency Rule”.
Network Management Policies:
Blocking: Sonic does not engage in any practice that blocks or otherwise prevents end user access to lawful content, applications, service, or non-harmful devices, including a description of what is blocked.
Throttling: Sonic does not engage in any practice that degrades or impairs access to lawful internet traffic based on content, application, service, user, or use of a non-harmful device.
Affiliated Prioritization: Sonic does not engage in any practice that directly or indirectly favors some traffic over other traffic, including through use of techniques such as traffic shaping, prioritization, or resource reservation, to benefit an affiliate.
Paid Prioritization: Sonic does not engage in any practice that directly or indirectly favors some traffic over other traffic, including through use of techniques such as traffic shaping, prioritization, or resource reservation, in exchange for consideration, monetary or otherwise.
Congestion Management: Sonic does not engage in any practice to limit customer usage nor impose penalties for bandwidth consumption for reasonable household use.
Application-Specific Behavior: Sonic does not engage in any practice to block or rate-control specific protocols or protocol ports, modify protocol fields in ways not prescribed by the protocol standard, or otherwise inhibit or favor certain applications or classes of applications.
Device Attachment Rules: Sonic does not engage in any practice to restrict the types of devices that connect to the network. For certain commercial products, customers must use the supplied router to maintain network integrity.
Security: Sonic does not engage in any practice that could possibly jeopardize network security or customer information. Sonic employs a variety of industry-standard security practices on the network to ensure customer protection. Sonic monitors overall network activity to detect potential intrusion and denial of service attack. Additionally, end-users whose systems are compromised, and are sourcing malicious traffic, may be contacted or suspended until the system is secured. We may block traffic to or from customers when a denial of service attack is in progress, and when such traffic is impacting network elements shared by other customers.
Performance Characteristics:
Service Description: Sonic provides internet access via Fiber. Actual speeds vary by location and product selected. See our website for details.
Impact of Specialized Services: No specialized services which affect last-mile capacity are currently offered.
Commercial Terms:
Pricing: Sonic offers a variety of products at a range of price points. Products offered are based on geographical availability at the service address. To see product availability and pricing for your address, please visit https://www.sonic.com/availability.
Privacy Policies: Sonic firmly believes in customer privacy and has been recognized with a perfect rating by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Who’s Got Your Back” privacy report for multiple years.
Customer browsing information is not stored. Network traffic management practices are limited to protocol flow analysis (header information only) as required to plan peering, transit and enforce network security, e.g. DoS prevention and tracking. Traffic information is not provided to third parties, nor used by the ISP. Full text of Sonic’s privacy policy can be found here.
Redress Options:
Sonic is responsive to all complaints. Please email support@sonic.com if you have any concerns.