Access to Fiber is 100 feet away

[bgardella@gmail.com]

Sonic Fiber is literally 100 feet away from my house. Bancroft St in Berkeley has Sonic fiber on the utility poles. My street (2300 block of Browning St) has all its utilities underground. It would take a utility worker a few hours to run it underground. I would bet you could pick up a dozen new subscribers if you did. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring Sonic Fiber to Browning Street in Berkeley!!!

-- Desperate To Leave Comcast Behind Forever

[dane]

We need cooperation from City public works in order to achieve this - specifically, they need a process to allow for narrow-slot trenching. Also called micro or nano trenching, this is a process to cut a one-inch slot from four to fourteen inches deep for the deployment of fiber. Paired up with directional boring, and with the right policies regarding permit and inspection costs, these are the critical components.

We have been planning some outreach and advocacy to a number of Cities to encourage the modernization of current trenching standards, but haven't made much progress on that yet. Sorry!

[flex-brannigan]

Good luck getting Sonic to send an employee or a lobbyist to a planning commission meeting. There's too much money to be made from your neighbors with poles in front of their homes.

I'd be interested in knowing if Sonic could challenge PG&E or Comcast in court in order to access either company's conduit. PG&E is a de facto monopoly and Comcast is a common carrier, both of which have received a lot of taxpayer support over the years. My armchair legal expertise thinks it's interesting to think about.

[dane]

Good luck getting Sonic to send an employee or a lobbyist to a planning commission meeting. There's too much money to be made from your neighbors with poles in front of their homes.

I'd be interested in knowing if Sonic could challenge PG&E or Comcast in court in order to access either company's conduit. PG&E is a de facto monopoly and Comcast is a common carrier, both of which have received a lot of taxpayer support over the years. My armchair legal expertise thinks it's interesting to think about.

We are working toward engaging with planning and permitting or public works staff in a number of communities. Today our focus is on developing the right materials to support their decisionmaking. We'd like to be able to leave them with a good set of proposed standards and need to develop those first.

In regards to use of conduit owned by others, it is possible to use either PG&E or AT&T conduit today, if there is vacant conduit, and at a cost. For PG&E conduit, the cost is massive and does not support a business model for residential services. And for AT&T conduit, the regulations require them to rent conduit only if there are two vacant conduits - and for residential areas, there never are. Generally, in residential areas, only one or two conduits were installed in the first place, so there isn't that much available capacity. And even with AT&T conduit, the cost is prohibitive too - but that's moot given that there isn't a surplus anyway.

[flex-brannigan]

AT&T, in the case of San Francisco at least, has their conduit full of POTS wiring that most people don't use any more. Hire a lobbyist to bug the PUC about it. Since both AT&T and PG&E have received billions in taxpayer subsidies they should be required by law to make their conduit available for free, full stop.

Let's says the PUC brushes you off and the state legislature doesn't take up this issue. Your lobbying firm could collect signatures for a state-wide ballot initiative to force them to do it. It's the kind of issue that would have broad appeal to voters. It would be a total slam dunk.

[dane]

I’d think that’d be a “taking” of private property by the government, and a constitutional issue. Nice to imagine, but not realistic.

On the positive side, fiber has the advantage of being very small compared to other utility infrastructure, making microtrenching a really good deployment solution.

[flex-brannigan]

I’d think that’d be a “taking” of private property by the government, and a constitutional issue. Nice to imagine, but not realistic.

How do you know it isn't realistic? Have you talked to your law firm about it? Is taxpayer subsidized property actually private? It's certainly worth finding out so your answer can start with something more definitive than "I'd think that..."

AT&T is already forced to allow you access to their POTS infrastructure so you can sell DSL. Do you really think it's that big of a stretch that the PUC might compel them to broaden the scope of that access to include AT&T conduit?

I could work from home if I had gig fiber — can't do it with DSL, as the upload speeds are too slow. The type of work I do requires very high bandwidth.

I think you owe it to your customers to find out for sure.

By the way, I do appreciate you coming onto the forums and have a back-and-forth with your customers. It's because of stuff like this that I've stayed with you guys so long.