Bay Area Internet providers thriving in the era of net neutrality

Over the last two years, the Bay Area’s (CA) community of Internet service providers has been tapping into the region’s bottomless demand for faster speeds at competitive prices. Take Sonic in Santa Rosa (CA). The high-speed broadband provider has doubled in size since 2015, according to CEO Dane Jasper, bolstering its ranks by 188 employees in 2016 alone. The company now employs 418 workers. The Bay Area’s broadband boom, in short, is confounding Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s assurances that the FCC’s approach to regulating Internet providers was stifling the development of Internet infrastructure.

The FCC is working through a proposal that would unwind network neutrality rules, leaving Internet providers to largely regulate themselves when it comes to maintaining an open Internet — a development with troubling consequences for Jasper's Sonic. “We’ve continued to invest in infrastructure deployment and in fact, we’re more concerned about the unlevel playing field that a lack of net neutrality could create,” he said.