Sonic Fiber - San Francisco Status?

[edwizard]

What's the status of a potential Sonic expansion in San Francisco? I live in Chinatown near Nob Hill and I would LOVE to make the switch.

Is it just the city preventing you from microtrenching? Is there any legislation in the works? Anything I can bug my district's supervisor about?

Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'd love to ditch Comcast for some Sonic Fiber. What's the pushback about?

[dane]

Today Sonic reaches about one third of San Francisco homes, and uptake is critical in driving this further. So, even if we do not reach you yet, please spread the word, on Nextdoor, Facebook, and with friends and family.

For premises we haven't reached yet in regions with aerial utilities, we are continuing our construction, but we do end up with many gaps in coverage due to overloaded poles. And we have been unsuccessful at getting pole owners (either PG&E or AT&T, they jointly own and either can allow it) to let us reinforce the unsafe poles. A few consumers affected by this have already filed complaints with the California Public Utilities Commission via their website, so it is possible this might change in the future.

And for those served by underground utilities, the City of San Francisco's department of public works does not allow new trenchless utility construction, so any entity that doesn't have an existing conduit (AT&T and Comcast) will be unable to build fiber optic infrastructure to serve premises with underground lines. SF's board of supervisors is considering an ordinance that would require SF DPW to allow microtrenching, but the method would be limited to use in sidewalk areas only, which we don't believe will make it feasible to build a citywide fiber to the premise network.

We are committed to bringing fiber to all of our members, and will continue to expand our reach everywhere we can. Membership size is the critical driver for our capability to accomplish this, so please tell everyone about Sonic!

[ichristie]

Thanks for the update, Dane.
How does one know if overloaded poles are the issue? We are serviced by poles in the alley between 8th & 9th avenue, Lawton & Moraga. They look ok to me :-/

[dane]

Thanks for the update, Dane.
How does one know if overloaded poles are the issue? We are serviced by poles in the alley between 8th & 9th avenue, Lawton & Moraga. They look ok to me :-/

We'd have to look at our engineering to give you guidance on this for any specific location.

[curbside]

I live in Diamond Heights and have had Sonic in the past. I'm too far from the CO to get any decent speed on DSL so my only option at the moment is Comcast. I don't anticipate seeing Sonic laying fiber in my neighborhood anytime soon. Is Sonic considering using 5G wireless to cover areas where laying fiber is not feasible?

[tbessie]

Same for me - far from the CO, in Cole Valley/Upper Haight area (Waller and Cole).

I have Fusion DSL, so I get around 9Mbps download / 1.75Mbps upload at most. I will never go to Comcast, so I'm stuck with this until fiber arrives.

Dane - you said your Engineering group would know about what the problem is with which areas. Who would we call to find this out ourselves, so we know which public utility and/or government to bug?

- Tim

[ichristie]

Thanks for the update, Dane.
How does one know if overloaded poles are the issue? We are serviced by poles in the alley between 8th & 9th avenue, Lawton & Moraga. They look ok to me :-/

We'd have to look at our engineering to give you guidance on this for any specific location.

Well, I'd love to know the result of that
Who do I talk to?

[bubba198]

It will take a local measure passed at the November ballot but it's too late to even enter submissions now, not to mention what it takes to prep the filing obtain the minimum signatures. It is sad that SF is so suborn about new technology. I was one the lucky Sunset aerial properties few years ago when Sonic first rolled out this unheard of and massively subject to disbelief project. Well it will take more pushing to get this city covered 100%

[uberbaum]

It appears that MonkeyBrains is still the only gigabit option for San Francisco Bayview / Bayview park. Has anything changed? I'd love to be a Sonic fiber customer!

[rustyhodge]

Good luck getting more than 10mbit/sec reliably on Monkey during peak video watching hours.