What will it take to get fiber in Albany

[kyle.depasquale]

Sonic fiber is just that - sonic's fiber, not resold AT&T fiber/Gigapower. Per previous posts on this forum, Sonic is in negotiations to resell faster speeds in the AT&T fiber network, but nothing has been finalized to date.

[eilsheehan]

Sonic sales representatives are going door to door in Albany (Nov 29th) offering Sonic fiber starting end of February. Does anyone know how good their fiber is? Have you talked to anyone in Brentwood or San Francisco? I see a lot of downtime on downdetector.com and I see postings by Sonic for "Fusion Fiber Intrusive Maintenace." Does anyone know how Sonic fiber really performs?

[bobfff]

Sorry I cannot answer your specific questions about Sonic's fiber service (though the prospect of full up- and download speeds at one gig are very different from offerings by other providers). I wondered if you could tell us which part(s) of Albany were being contacted by Sonic reps. I live close enough to Albany (north Berkeley) that knowledge that Sonic is close would lift my holiday spirits!

Thanks.

Bob

[ankh]

We're in N. Berkeley (40 feet south of the Albany city limit).
We have the dual-line bonded Fusion service.
Next spring sometime we're expecting to get fiber on our block.

After we got the 2-line FUsion there was a long stretch of unreliability off and on for weeks -- ATnT would blame Sonic, Sonic would come out and check and say our internal wiring was fine and the modem looked good so it had to be ATnT's problem.

This was solved eventually when several ATnT guys came to the house for what was called a "co-op" visit, supposedly meaning both companies would have someone involved at the same time. I dialed up Sonic's tech support on my cell phone and handed the phone to the ATnT guys, who then stayed on the phone with the Sonic tech while running tests. ATnT replaced stuff at the termination box for the drop, and at the phone pole, and then checked and fixed stuff all the way back to the central office on Solano before the problem went away.

Rock solid since then.

Sonic persists.

A year earlier we had intermittent problems with our then single Fusion line -- same thing, ATnT would claim the problem had to be the house wiring, Sonic would come out and verify the inside was OK and say it had to be ATnT's problem. Eventually Sonic somehow persuaded ATnT to replace the "drop" (wire from the pole to our house). THat helped. Then they cleaned up corrosion on our pole and another pole between us and the central office on Solano, and the problem went away.

[sysops]

Sorry I cannot answer your specific questions about Sonic's fiber service (though the prospect of full up- and download speeds at one gig are very different from offerings by other providers). I wondered if you could tell us which part(s) of Albany were being contacted by Sonic reps. I live close enough to Albany (north Berkeley) that knowledge that Sonic is close would lift my holiday spirits!

Thanks.

Bob

My friend in Berkeley was also able to get a pre-order for his location. If you haven't already, check your address at https://www.sonic.com/availability and see if it's got good news about fiber yet. Hopefully it'll bring good news!

[digitalbitstream]

Dane, I’m hoping that you can find a way to answer this question that doesn’t infringe on Sonic’s proprietary business strategy. Namely, is Sonic installing fiber (or planning same) in neighborhoods where AT&T FTTH exists?

Deploying in opposite order of existing Fusion speed seems to make sense. Don't work out from the CO, that's where it's already tolerable. Start where you can't possibly sell Fusion because it's thousands of feet by wire....

[Nomad]

I live in El Cerrito very near the Albany border and pre ordered with a very nice(Unlike the hard sell tactics of some other providers) Sonic sales rep last week. The eta was March 2018. Happy to support sonic and good to see them growing. Have Google fiber at my house in Austin and this will be 20$ cheaper. Hopefully The 1Gb up 1Gb down performs as well.

Go Sonic!

[ngufra]

Everyone i know who lives in the neighborhood all the way up to Berkeley hills is looking forward to sonic fiber being available.
As they know i am a sonic customer, they ask me about the experience and i am glad to tell them about the service quality and that sonic is always available willing and able to help.

Some had concerns about TV service and how to cut the cord. (I use tablo and a hauppage tuner on plex)

The only thing that worries me is that if everyone switches to sonic, speeds may not be that great at the connexion out of sonic network.

Also it may make sense for sonic to open a popup store for a couple of months on Solano so people can register, pick up a modem, get advice etc.