by
dane » Mon Nov 05, 2018 11:18 am
wardst wrote:These explanations make no sense. How can you be “under construction” and “breaking ground in a few months”?
Because some regions are under construction, while others will start soon, pending permit issuance.
Why can’t you communicate clearly to customers along the lines of
1. What has caused the delay
2. A specific date range of when my block can expect service?
Holidays are a lame reason when I was told I would have service in September.
Delays have been caused by a number of things, including permits as well as engineering and construction delays. The issues vary by region, for example we've got a huge group of customers who we cannot get online until we do a single directional bore between a vault and a pole - but the street where that must be done was recently re-paved, so it requires a special exemption. And the City has the right to disallow any construction on downtown streets during the holiday shopping season, so as soon as November 1st arrived with no permit issued, this may result in additional delay.
The holiday moratorium is an option for the City because they want to protect local retailers who would be impacted if downtown streets were blocked by construction during this critical portion of the retail season. We are certainly understanding of the impacts on local retailers and the public, so we have got to work with the City to determine what is achievable while minimizing any impact.
We also have regions where the City would like to review the aesthetics of the passive fiber optic patching cabinets that go on the utility poles, and we are negotiating that issue too. I think that concerns about both powered Cable-TV boxes and about new wireless and 5G deployments may have caught up our passive (no electronics) splitter cabinets too. They are not a wireless facility, nor do they contain any electronics, produce any EMF, nor do they have lights or have fans or make noise, etc - they are just a passive optical splitter housing cabinet - but we need to work through demonstrating all of that and justifying their size, aesthetics and locations.
My contract with Comcast ended in August. I am paying the higher, non-promotional rates every month I wait for sonic to connect me up. It would have been cheaper to re-up with Comcast.
I am sorry for our failure to meet our projected time-frames. We have learned lessons from that experience, and have as a result stopped providing members with estimates on the signup pages at this point, as it's just impossible to assure we'll meet them as we work with each new City's standards and requirements. We had become a bit complacent due to the automated online permitting processes at the City of San Francisco, where the construction and encroachment permits and traffic plans are all managed online and are issued at a consistent and fast pace.
I do hope that you will stick with us - the savings and the reliable high-performance product should be a win in the long term.