Thu Apr 8 14:29:50 PDT 1999 — I’m pleased to report that both PacWest and Focal dialup circuits are online and functioning well.
Yesterday morning, PacBell and PacWest made changes to the trunking serving Cloverdale, and we are seeing high speed connections on those lines. Some customers were getting connections as low as 2400bps and 4800bps on Monday and Tuesday of this week. This slow speed situation has been resolved.
In addition, we’ve been working fast and hard to get the new Focal circuits online, and we paid $1000.00 to move the due date from April 25th up to the 9th. PacBell and Focal worked together quickly to get this new capacity online, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s available now!
New capacity with Focal means that we’re free of two major ongoing problems.
The first is phone company quality. PacWest at times has returned ‘all circuits busy’ messages to our customers, and early this week, ridiculously poor connection speeds. With the new Focal circuits, all customers in all service areas can choose between at least two telephone companies in case of these type of troubles.
The second is modem incompatibility. Some customers have reported problems with slow speeds, retrains or disconnects since the deployment of Livingston PM3 equipment with PacWest on the xxx-0174 numbers. Now, with the Focal deployment, we’ve provisioned these lines with USRobotics Total Control Enterprise Hub equipment, just like Santa Rosa’s xxx-1003 dial group. What this means is that all customers in all service areas can choose the modem equipment which works best with their modem.
This new deployment also gets us a couple new features. The USR gear supports X2 as well as v.90, and the Livingston gear supports K56Flex as well as v.90. Additionally, the Focal lines support true 64kbps ISDN, so users who’ve been forced down to 56kbps ISDN on PacWest can move over to Focal for better speed.
Sonic.net is committed to customer satisfaction, and we’ve made a significant investment in equipment and lines to give customers maximum flexibility. The payoff is that every customer in every service area can choose between at least two phone companies, and between the two major modem/access server vendors.
For your reference, PacWest numbers are xxx-0174, and Focal numbers are xxx-9811. We’re currently working on integrating the 70 new Focal served cities into our POP finder tool. In the mean time, you can use Focal’s tool at www.sonic.net/info/focal/ to find Focal only numbers. Customers who are having problems with xxx-0174 numbers can get new Focal numbers at this address.
Shortly, all 150+ of Sonic.net’s local dialup numbers for 80 cities in Northern California will be integrated into our POP finder tool at www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl — As always, Sonic.net is not responsible for long distance telephone charges. Check with your operator to make sure that any number you use is local!