Gigabit Fiber in Bernal Heights

[lunulair]

I'm seeing that a Sonic contractor has strung a single fiber cable down the length of Crescent (mid-February 2022) and a neighbor reports that there were workers overhead around Arnold/Crescent, which is a few blocks east of Mission. The other end of the cable seems to be coiled in a loop on a pole at Crescent/Folsom.

The cable itself has orange 'Sonic' ID sleeves. Understandably it takes time to tie that into the overall Sonic network and then the house-by-house termination begins, where I imagine Sonic installers can probably only connect a few house per day. (It's not the same as for AT&T who already has their cables installed so they only have to activate the service for a new tenant/owner with minimal physical work.)

I'm realistically not expecting fiber service until May or June, given the current status. It would be nice to have an update from Sonic, nonetheless.

[rustyhodge]

Consider yourself lucky. Sonic is literally 150 feet from me, but can't service me with Fiber. The house across the street is backs up to the another street serviced with Sonic, but my street is a stub connected by an underground connection for a block. So I'm either stuck with Monkey Brains or Comcast, both which have proven unreliable. I keep a Sonic Fusion DSL as a backup to Monkeybrains, but it's still problematic because the Sonic DSL doesn't have the upload speeds I need and the Monkey connection is well... amateur.

[rustyhodge]

Oh, and the FCC broadband maps show Sonic Fiber is actually available on my street for some reason; they also show Wave/Astound is available but they too never finished the underground construction to link my block to the rest of their network (I tried getting them installed a couple years ago... my street is wired for Wave but it was never connected to the rest of the network.

[lunulair]

Consider yourself lucky. Sonic is literally 150 feet from me, but can't service me with Fiber. The house across the street backs up to the another street serviced with Sonic, but my street is a stub connected by an underground connection for a block.

There will always be some sort of boundary where a given service stops, and it sounds like you're unfortunately just outside of that, with no decent alternatives. Yeah that sucks, especially considering we live in a tech-capital city.

the Monkey connection is well... amateur.

I've met Rudy Rucker a few times back in the early 2000s (at Bike Rodeo events, etc.) and while he's a seemingly likable guy I think his business started as a 'Let's try this as an experiment and see where it goes' sort of thing. We tried to get MB service (long before Sonic even offered DSL in SF) and couldn't get a line-of-sight connection to any of their nodes so we limped along with 3 Mbps AT&T for a decade. Sometimes I wonder if this whole "Internet" fad is even worth it (except for streaming Groove Salad, of course.)

[lunulair]

[From a different thread]

My street (the last stub of Treat Ave) has aerial poles but is fed via underground utilities at the end of the street, so Sonic wasn't able to connect to it.

I know someone else who used to live on Treat and decided to look at a map. (They were on the other side of Chavez, though.) I see the stub you're describing - that truly sounds like a no-man's-land.

I have no idea what Sonic's business calculus is for connecting up a new street/neighborhood, nor if they have formal provisions for gathering a list of prospective customers to drive the build-out.* But seeing as they already have fiber one street over (per your description), have you considered going door-to-door to everyone on your street to gather a list of signatures indicating real interest? I'd think Sonic would at least have a door-hanger kit of some sort (maybe they do already) where one could at least tell neighbors what could be available if they contacted the company.

It might be worth compiling a list to submit all at once (rather than piecemeal over time) to get it on Sonic's radar, assuming there's enough local interest, and that Sonic has the resources to follow through if said interest is enough to justify the build-out. Ya never know until you try...


* Years ago I lived in an area where a number of us had discussed, on and off, the idea of getting the local gas utility to bring service to our isolated area. This was on the east coast and prone to long electrical outages due to hurricanes, so having gas would at least allow for running generators continuously during the blackouts.

At one point the roads were all going to get dug up to do extensive water pipe work, so I decided to knock on every door and gather a list of homeowners interested in getting gas service if there were enough committed customers to justify the installation. This could potentially get done before all the roads got repaved, thus saving some money. It turned out we had enough of a critical mass, but prior to this no one had really conducted a meaningful survey. So we managed to get gas service in an area where no one thought it could be done.

[lunulair]

I just wandered around Bernal Depths (south of Cortland) and it appears that Sonic has fiber up on the poles for most, but not all, of the street grid between Cortland and Crescent. If you live in the area look for new wooden crossbars and steel support cables, coupled with a thin black cable bearing orange 'SONIC TELECOM' ID sleeves.

(Interestingly, Cortland itself only has underground cables, so I'm not sure how the buildings along that street will get fed. Sharing existing infrastructure with competitors? Or a new set of conduits under the sidewalks? That ain't gonna be cheap.)

So things are happening overhead, but now comes the time-consuming part of hooking up each individual residence, which will require a brand new drop to each house since the service won't be running over pre-existing Telco copper. Patience will be a challenge, but we're getting there.

[lunulair]

Ok, I wrote that last comment over four months ago and I'm running out of patience myself. Is there any update on fiber installation in Bernal south of Cortland? Has anyone here heard anything?

[aatreya]

I'd love an update on this as well. (The last "monthly construction update" we received was four months ago.)

[rustyhodge]

Based on prior statements by Dane and what Sonic has done other places, is they can't offer service where utilities are underground. So Cortland won't be getting fiber.

There are a few blocks in the Bernal area that are "isolated" as well, fed from underground connections, so Sonic won't be able to connect to those blocks either.

[lunulair]

Cortland itself might be an exception (although perhaps those buildings could be fed to the rear from streets parallel to Cortland, right-of-way issues notwithstanding), but there is still the whole residential street grid south of Cortland with Sonic fiber already strung on the poles, waiting for any kind of status update.