Month: December 2008

Cable lacing introduction

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One of the arcane arts of telco is cable lacing with wax string. I’ve been given a crash course by Juston, and I managed to demonstrate on some test cables and ties that the CEO hasn’t lost his knack.

Here are a couple examples of some simple cable lacing used to manage a set of large cables. Yup, I tied these myself. The third image is a cable end itself, with an AMP Champ tool and the connector just after termination.

Check out Wikipedia’s cable lacing article out for more infomation. For additional info, tools and supplies (you can do this at home!), see Tecra Tools.

Wrapping up new network

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Forestville under construction

New vehicle livery, at Forestville CO


We started construction in Forestville today. It’s the last of our initial nineteen offices slated for build-out during this initial phase. All of the other locations are nearly done, with just a few loose ends to be tied up over the next few weeks.

Forestville was last on the list, as it’s the smallest town we will be initially serving on the new network. Despite it’s small size, Sonic.net today serves a surprising amount of DSL there, and I’m personally hopeful that it does well. As it’s my home town, I’ve got a best of a vested interest. (No, to answer the obvious question, we didn’t build out an entire CO because the CEO lives nearby. I’m well served today with very fast wireless access.)

Here’s a photo taken late today as the light faded, the central office in the background. What do you think of our new livery?

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Cutting the cord

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A recent survey confirms what ILEC investor calls and SEC filings have shown for some time. Consumers are moving away from land lines in favor of mobile phone products.

Eighteen percent of homes have no land lines, and another thirteen percent have land lines but rarely if ever use them. In total, this means that 30% of users don’t have or don’t want an old fashioned “plain old telephone service” (POTS) line.

Currently however, Sonic.net’s legacy AT&T delivered DSL services require land line voice service as prerequisite. While this could be very limited measured rate service, it generally means a hidden cost of between fifteen and twenty five dollars.

One of the reasons that I’m excited about our new Fusion products is that they are available standalone. If you want land line voice, we will be offering that early next year, but “dry” service (no voice) will always be available too!

This lets customers purchase only the service they want, without the voice requirement that our legacy AT&T DSL products come with today.

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2008 Wrap Up

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Staff photo, December 2008

Staff photo, December 2008

We are coming to the close of another exciting year. 2008 has been a really enjoyable time, and our staff get all of the credit for that. We are doing some exciting new things, making improvements to existing products, and providing support that I continually hear good things about.

Thanks also to our customers, I very much appreciate your loyalty and patronage. We will continue to work hard for you, launching exciting new products and delivering the care you have come to expect.

2009 is going to be even more interesting, and I’m real excited about what’s on the schedule for us in the coming year.

-Dane Jasper

You’ve got to have a hobby, right?

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Here’s a post that isn’t related to work. I do manage some extracurricular activities in my spare time!

We harvested honey a couple months ago from all three of our hives. All three were captured swarms, including one we captured from a redwood tree earlier this year. We managed about three gallons of honey, roughly 35 pounds. Not a bad harvest considering the dry weather that we had this year.

Here are some photos of the harvest and bottling. Unfortunately, since these pictures were taken, one of the three hives has failed, perhaps due to colony collapse disorder. I hope that the other two manage through the winter.

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The Sonic.net T-Shirt Contest

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For the past few years we have done an internal T-Shirt design contest where employees submit their artwork and the design with the most Employee votes is then made into our newest T-Shirt handed out at our annual Holiday Party.

Now that we have this Blog, I thought it would be fun to share some of the entries our Employees came up with; Customer votes will not affect the winner, however it would be fun to see what designs Customers like, so vote with a comment.

Almost done!

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Cabs for Forestville and one last San Francisco office

Last cabinets, for Forestville and one final San Francisco office

I was wandering around the warehouse this evening trying to find a plastic chair mat, and I noticed that it feels pretty empty in there.

We have had twenty huge cabinets on top of the shelves for quite a few months, and the place really was quite full. In addition to the cabinets, there were many boxes of DSLAMs, ADSL2+ and EFM cards and various parts. Now, these last two cabinets are the only ones left, the rest are gone, gone, off to deployment.

It’s an exciting time, as we draw close to completion of our first nineteen central offices.