Dane - for real, what's the deal with Sonic fiber in Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito?

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
205 posts Page 19 of 21
by ankh » Sat Aug 25, 2018 9:42 am
I believe they won't be installing the drops to the houses until there's a signal on the fiber system, and that's being delayed by connecting whatsis at the central office. Berkeley takes forever to act on permits. I'd guess installing fiber to the house would involve taking out whatever service (Fusion in our case) is currently working, and better to wait and change over without losing access.
by aanon4 » Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:25 pm
Two days of August left and Availability still claims I'll get fiber this month. I even got email today promising me they'd complete my area this month. I'd be more exciting if there was any fiber outside my house, or if the fiber at the end of my block (which doesn't come up my street) was actually connected to the Sonic box on the utility pole; but it isn't. There doesn't seem to be any fiber (only support wires) anywhere around the Marin block uphill of the Circle near where I live. So I expect another delay; I think that makes it the third: originally it was May, then July, then August; will it be September or October this time?

In all seriousness Sonic, could you *please* just get ahead of this and promise a date you can hit? I'm sure you have better visibility that Availability is providing because I very much doubt Dane will wake up on Saturday and be *shocked* you missed the deadline again. It would be really nice if a communications company could, you know, communicate.
by dane » Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:31 pm
aanon4 wrote:In all seriousness Sonic, could you *please* just get ahead of this and promise a date you can hit? I'm sure you have better visibility that Availability is providing because I very much doubt Dane will wake up on Saturday and be *shocked* you missed the deadline again. It would be really nice if a communications company could, you know, communicate.
We are struggling with a set of issues today that are new for us, and it's resulting in a lot of uncertainty. We are still awaiting local permits for road excavation, and now one City is holding up permits for encroachment while they consider our passive optical splitter boxes that go on the utility poles. Additionally, pole owners are slower than ever before processing attachment applications. We're also not finding enough fielding and engineering capability to run at the pace we'd like to.

As you'll see from other posts here, we are getting folks connected in the East Bay, in Kensington, Albany, and parts of Berkeley, but clearly we're not meeting our internal expectations. I'm sorry.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by aanon4 » Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:50 pm
I appreciate the response, I do; and clearly this is not the simplest thing. But if there's no way to give a realistic estimate of when fiber will drop at my address then please stop the Availability tool and emails telling me otherwise. If it might not be until January then I'd rather know that; it's not like I'm going to run off with Comcast in the meantime.
by dane » Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:33 am
aanon4 wrote:I appreciate the response, I do; and clearly this is not the simplest thing. But if there's no way to give a realistic estimate of when fiber will drop at my address then please stop the Availability tool and emails telling me otherwise. If it might not be until January then I'd rather know that; it's not like I'm going to run off with Comcast in the meantime.
When we do update dates, it's because we've got what we believe is a good projection on the expected delivery interval. And for contingencies, we always add 60 extra days - in the past, we'd sometimes eat into this, but generally delivered within 8 days of the expected in service date.

So, the new time-lines we've pushed are, hopefully, accurate, based upon the expectations we have from the cities on permit and access timing.

That said, I am talking to team this AM about what additional info we can provide, because our normal processes are breaking down right now. The normal expectation is that we might have some portions of a project delayed, and that delay might occur once. This results in a single "we're sorry, due to construction delays things are running later than expected" email, then the problem is resolved, we go live a bit late, and orders flow. But the issues in the East Bay have left us again and again pushing dates, because new issues that were totally unexpected arose and re-cast our completion timelines again and again.

My goal is to write up some details and get those out to affected customers shortly!
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by ankh » Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:19 pm
I hope some people at EFF and at interested news media are watching the process and will want to write a story about the sources of the obstacles to competitively providing local service in our area.
by bludrop » Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:44 pm
As someone who was originally told that fiber would be available in April, and now still being told (according to the availability checker) on the second-to-last day of August that it will be ready in August, it would certainly be great to receive some official communication about what is happening and what realistic plans are like. I think every month since April the date has been pushed back another month. At this point, I have almost no reason to believe that it will get installed in September.

I am sure Berkeley is making it difficult to set things up -- they are certainly notorious at that. But that should be made clear. If it's not going to be ready until January, then just say that. I'm glad to hear that you are working on sending out communication to (future) customers - I hope that it is as clear as possible and comes very soon! My Comcast contract expired in June and I was really hoping to not renew... though paying "full price" is not great either...
by alxyang24 » Fri Aug 31, 2018 4:35 pm
Just got the new email from sonic saying its now October which I presume is due to the CO issues and construction, I can see that my street has sonic fiber strung but the cabinet isn't fully ready yet. I'm sad, but I know these take a bit of time and it'll be worth the wait!

We sincerely apologize for the delay in delivering you Gigabit Fiber Internet.

Due to construction challenges, we are adjusting your expected fiber connection timeline to October 2018.

We understand how excited you are for your fiber service, and that pushing your expected connection timeline may be frustrating.

We're building Gigabit Fiber to as many cities as possible, as quickly as we can. And each city is a little different, which requires a new deployment strategy. Periodically, our team has to adjust construction timelines due to a variety of reasons, including unforeseen weather conditions, city permitting processes, and construction challenges. In your circumstance, we ran into construction challenges, which affects our network build-out timeline and expected delivery date.

We are completing network construction each month and still very much intend to deliver Gigabit Fiber Internet to your location; it's just taking a bit longer than expected. We are working constantly to improve our fiber construction process, and to ensure that our estimated dates remain as accurate as possible.

Thank you for your patience and support! We'll be in contact with you again soon.
by ankh » Fri Aug 31, 2018 4:39 pm
Well, my neighbor at the Monterey Ave. end of the block is now connected -- that's one new Sonic customer. Creeping closer.
by aanon4 » Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:49 pm
And so arrives the "delayed until October" email. I wonder how real this date will be. Ah well, no surprise really.
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