Sonic.net customer here. Why I give them my money:
1) https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ The company is politically outspoken and well aligned with the interests of its customers.
2) Their customer service is actually knowledgeable, empowered and downright pleasant to engage with. The only frustration I've had is whenever they've had to delegate work to AT&T.
I'll also note that, though the DSL service is obviously not very fast, it has had excellent uptime and consistency for me. I'm consistently able to stream HD video (1080p 30fps, 900p 60fps) without interruption. Contrast this to local cable where many people complain about poor streaming performance around peak times, despite much 'faster' service.
As much as 12-14Mbps is limiting, you genuinely get that performance nearly always.
I'm not currently a Sonic.net customer[1], but what I liked about them was most importantly they know how to run their network, and have good peering and transit: they don't do PPPoE, or have wrong MTUs set (ATT's devices advertise a 1480 MTU for 6rd based IPv6, even though the MTU they actually accept is 1472, and they also rate limit sending of needs frag packets). They have a customer forum where their network and service teams interact with customers for those things that are broken, but not broken enough to call support. The CEO is active in the forums as well.
[1] Sonic doesn't serve my area directly, so I had to pick between (discontinued) line shared 6mbps ADSL1 and resold ATT uverse at 45mbps; and then 1gbps became available, so I went with that.
One of the first to deploy residential and small business gigabit Internet connectivity at affordable prices. Strong respect for customer privacy.
They back their words up with actions. Basically, an ethical, value-to-the-customer organization and business model. (As of a couple of years ago; I'm out of touch.)
I'll add, also a local/regional player. Good for competition.
P.S. In the U.S., having such a choice in terms of a provider and value for service, is actually rather unusual. People who don't have something like Sonic in their area (me, for one) and who know anything about ISP's and what they provide, look on longingly.
Google's Fiber offer almost made it to my area. Sigh... so close, and yet so far.
Worlds better. Not an exploitative wannabe-monopoly. Their service is way more reliable. And if something goes wrong, when you call tech support you get a smart person who knows things and has power to fix problems.
1) https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ The company is politically outspoken and well aligned with the interests of its customers.
2) Their customer service is actually knowledgeable, empowered and downright pleasant to engage with. The only frustration I've had is whenever they've had to delegate work to AT&T.