During an AT&T repair visit this week on our antiquated DSL line, the tech gave us the same spiel they have the last couple years about how great everything would be when we get fiber, but he had no knowledge of actual plans other than "they're wanting fiber on all AT&T owned poles". He did say that both Gridley and Live Oak offices were recently upgraded to support fiber, which makes me hopeful they really are moving towards fiber in our towns; still, I find it hard to believe. While I'm sure I'd notice trucks hanging fiber if it actually starts happening, is there anything to look for to validate these claims before that? I didn't notice anything related in public planning department or city council records, but I don't know if it actually would require such permits if they're hanging on existing poles.
plwww, I sympathize with you on this. Firstly, AT&T techs doing a hard-sell on AT&T's own lines as a solution to all problems (even trying to sell me their 1 G fiber despite there being no fiber on the block). Secondly, having previously read through your thread on AT&T woes with Legacy DSL, I can say that I now have a much greater hands-on experience with being strung along by the AT&T infrastructure "mystery box".
We are still desperately clinging to our own Legacy DSL (6 Mbps line, 5.1 Mbps max download, 0.7 Mbps max upload) with no upgrade options in sight. I am loathe to discontinue Sonic due to their customer service, accountability and ethics. Our line has been 99.99% rock-solid with Sonic since early 2012. In December 2020 things started going south with a number of outages. One was due to AT&T "closing" our port with no explanation. Then we had a complete AT&T service failure for roughly 5 months (July 21 - Dec 8, 2021) that required us to rent service from a neighbor. Within 2 blocks is 1 G fiber that was installed years ago. There has been no movement since that time.
(NOTE: During the long outage mentioned above, Sonic CS was responsive and did their best to help, but I did hear "Legacy DSL will end soon" a number of times. Sonic also suggested looking for alternate internet service to resolve our outage, even though that would be with a competitor.)
The areas around us that have 1 G fiber cannot initiate service with Sonic. We are one of the towns that has some kind of AT&T agreement with the county that excludes competitors using their lines. Only grandfathered accounts such as ours are allowed to continue ... for now. I believe Fremont and Pacifica are among the cities that cannot have new Sonic service at this time. When I talked with my city's IT manager, they did not have knowledge of why this was, just that it was handled by the county or higher up the chain.
AT&T Fiber is very random from my perspective (and that of various AT&T employees whom I have spoken to candidly and off-the-record over the years, including those who work with the high-end fiber lines, not just those you see draped across your street poles). AT&T will rush out fiber lines in some areas and streets, then suddenly stop with no explanation, often leaving one house with 1 G fiber, next to a house that can barely get 1.5 Mbps Legacy DSL.
I guess the bottom line is, you will know when AT&T starts marketing to you about upgrading. And even then, if Sonic does not already have the ability to offer service in that location, you will have to make a decision.
PS. A family member with U-Verse for phone, internet and TV had their phone go out and AT&T tried to convince them that upgrading to their new Fiber would "fix" the issue. The resolution required my intervention and insistence on toggling of various account settings on AT&T's side to get it working again (account re-initialization, then forwarding of the phone, then un-forwarding to restore dial-tone). No one can explain how/why it happened.