Gigabit Berkeley

[ceavapotter]

I moved to Berkeley 12 months ago and was really excited to get gigabit. I signed up for sonic ADSL to supprot this great company but unfortunaltely, I got such terrible speeds (~3 MBPS) that I've had to switch to using Comcast WIFI and now that my 12 months is up I've just cancelled sonic

My original estimated date install date was november but that's come and gone. I'm not actually finding the new emails that useful, the last one told by that my neighborhood was 96% activated, but that doesn't tell me much. I don't know what my neigborhood is (is it my street? the whole of berkeley? all of the east bay?) and it still doesn't give me any indication of when I"m going to get activated. AFAICT, the utility poles don't even have fiber on them yet.

Dane - Can you give me any more details on what's going on? I live on Oregon street, near sacramento.

[coyote2]

I'm not actually finding the new emails that useful

I was a little reassured by what it didn't say. I read on a local forum that Sonic has been excluded from a conduit somewhere, so I was afraid we were gonna hear there was an area which wouldn't get Sonic.

the last one told by that my neighborhood was 96% activated, but that doesn't tell me much. I don't know what my neigborhood is (is it my street? the whole of berkeley? all of the east bay?) and it still doesn't give me any indication of when I"m going to get activated. AFAICT, the utility poles don't even have fiber on them yet.

Yup, no way did it mean my street or what I would call a neighborhood. Maybe it meant our city.

[cmeisel]

I also thought my pole did not have sonic but I was wrong. I walked down a pole and (with binoculars) spotted the sonic wire. It is usually the top wire and it will say "Sonic Telecom"

[lefish]

For any Sonic folks here, wondering if you've made any progress on the permitting process for the optical splitters and on construction in general in Central Berkeley, west of downtown? I'm personally interested in FDA 27B, but also curious about the whole area bounded by University/Dwight/MLK/Sacramento.

As others have posted, I recently received a marketing email from you saying that "96% of my area is activated". How do you define my "area", since there are large neighborhoods nearby in addition to mine that aren't even yet strung, let alone activated?

Any info or update you can provide is greatly appreciated!

And, FWIW, my mother-in-law in N Berkeley on Shattuck just had her Sonic fiber installed (had to nag and nag her to do it), and it's great!

Thanks,
David

[cmeisel]

I can only assume Sonic can't send a customized email to every pre-order. I am celebrating by 14th $0 invoice for my pre-order. I was as disappointed with the last 96% email as most of you. I do understand that Sonic has been so burned by the city, accidents, etc, that they don't want to give a date.
I wish there was a compromise to at least tell customers who contact support and ask some more info and ask them not to share. But that doesn't happen. Support gives out less info than you can find on this forum.
I don't believe there are more permit issues but I might be wrong. I believe it is now mainly backend work to add capacity and to figure out what to do with people affected by underground (small fraction of people in the Berkeley Hills around Grizzly Peak).
I have been starring at the Sonic (and ATT) Fiber cable 10 feet from my house for months now. I look for Sonic Trucks but I almost never see any in the Hills yet. There are many down the hill around Cedar and Oxford, even as high as Cedar and Euclid.

I am still hoping for the end of Feb.
I do agree emails need to be improved but I do understand why they do what they do. It just went from one extreme to another. Too many dates to none at all. I preferred it when I got a date even if it was not met. It would give me some basic idea what to expect.

[digitalbitstream]

This is Sonic's Fiber Distribution Area #39. This is the one affected by Berkeley's planned undergrounding project. As this entire area is served from one point, the underground project will disrupt the entire plan, and the fiber lines will have be re-fed from a different direction.

FDA39.jpg (137.56 KiB) Viewed 2102 times

I have no idea why there seems to be a gap between this area, and the next area over shown in green.

[cmeisel]

I am on FDA39 and Dane made very clear that the underground work is not slowing or affecting fiber installs for people on FDA39 who will not get underground. So it seems that part is already solved.

[carletonwantsfiber]

Sonic posted a Notice of Telecom Construction at the corner of California and Carleton on Nov 16, 2018. Project number 1607-FDA 30-3096. It was to provide community notice before filing permits from what I understand. However, there is no active permit application on Berkeley's permit database for this location now going on two months from when this was posted. Is this Sonic delaying on filing the permit or Berkeley's fault? This pole is going to house our FDA and we've been waiting for Sonic fiber since about this time last year - I'm happy enough to pester the city/permits office if that's what needs to happen.

[dane]

Sonic posted a Notice of Telecom Construction at the corner of California and Carleton on Nov 16, 2018. Project number 1607-FDA 30-3096. It was to provide community notice before filing permits from what I understand. However, there is no active permit application on Berkeley's permit database for this location now going on two months from when this was posted. Is this Sonic delaying on filing the permit or Berkeley's fault? This pole is going to house our FDA and we've been waiting for Sonic fiber since about this time last year - I'm happy enough to pester the city/permits office if that's what needs to happen.

These notices are a new process, the City asked us to do photoshop images of the passive (no electronics) splitter cabinets on each pole where one would be cited, and to give the public opportunity to provide feedback. I think that it's likely that this issue arose because someone was concerned that these might house wireless equipment or electronics. They do not - no noise, no lights, no antennas, no EMF radiation. The City has given us approval to place cable and do other work in parallel with these applications, so while this has held up activation of some FDAs, we are not at a construction standstill - but until these permits are issued, we could end up stalled, so that is a key reason we've ceased providing activation date estimates: we only want to estimate when the outcome is reasonably known, and with these new permit requirements, there's not full certainty about how long it'll take.

[coyote2]

Thank you Dane for being patient with Berkeley. I'm patient with however long it needs to take. But...

If you hit a roadblock and it would help for us to speak up, at the proper time I will be delighted to do so!

(This whole thing makes my giddy with joy since I've lobbied Berkeley politicians for fibre competition repeatedly over the years starting decades ago.)