Gigabit Berkeley

[dane]

Since I seem to get ignored here, I wrote to sales@sonic this morning to try to get some clue.

"There will be no construction updates for current customers in Fiber areas until the Fiber is ready to be installed."

This is literally the worst customer service/retention policy I've ever heard. You'll send monthly updates to people who *aren't* customers, but decades of loyalty is rewarded with being treated *worse* than pre-orders.

Tell me this isn't the real policy?

Any update on 2300 Ashby would be appreciated. I fully understand the challenges dealing with Berkeley (we just built an ADU in our back yard), but simply deciding to keep your loyal customers in the dark will do nothing but drive them away.

Yes, that's odd, I thought we worked up an update newsletter for both pre-order and existing Fusion customers. I'll inquire with the communications team.

Regarding your location, it's currently estimated to go online on 2/12/2019, or a bit under 90 days from now. Here's a map snapshot, FYI. As you can also see here, the initial expected date was 7/9/2018, so that's why we weren't really set up to communicate, we expected to simply deliver good news when it was complete. Clearly, that's stretched out, a lot, due to engineering, permitting and construction issues in the East Bay, and we need to communicate more.



Thanks for your patience, we are working hard to get caught up on FDA activations now!

[dane]

It would be so nice to see a map of the areas below. I believe I am FDA 39. I have no idea where this starts (if I am even FDA 39), what is around us, what is live already, etc. A larger map would be so useful to get an idea what is where and what is live already rather than this one by one.
somehow I feel the answer will be we can't do that but I am trying anyways.

Yes, we're not providing a full view of the network out of concern about releasing proprietary information.

But yes, you are in FDA 39, which is currently estimated in late February. We've got a backbone cable that has to be completed through the two adjacent neighborhoods to the North of you which creates some dependencies.

[Zandr]

Dane-

Thank you for the update! Far easier to be patient with even a little bit of information.

Thanks again,
-Zandr

[lefish]

Thanks for your awesome responses Dane!

I know you don't want to be continually hammered with one-off "what about my neighborhood?" requests. But I am insanely eager and curious -- not to mention my kids pester me every day (they want their Fortnite faster).

You mentioned earlier that the issue with central Berkeley was with the optical splitter needing to be approved by the City, but that it hopefully won't affect the timeline. But you never indicated what that was.

I'd love to know what your estimated availability is for the 2400 block of Jefferson Ave and what FDA that is. And, to echo Zandr, additional communication for existing customers would go a long way - including reducing inquiries like this one to you and your CS team.

Thanks for all you do.
David

[ds_sonic_asif]

But yes, you are in FDA 39, which is currently estimated in late February. We've got a backbone cable that has to be completed through the two adjacent neighborhoods to the North of you which creates some dependencies.

Well, that makes me chime in and ask as well. What is the currently estimate for pre-order #645066?

Thank you.

[dane]

Thanks for your awesome responses Dane!

I know you don't want to be continually hammered with one-off "what about my neighborhood?" requests. But I am insanely eager and curious -- not to mention my kids pester me every day (they want their Fortnite faster).

You mentioned earlier that the issue with central Berkeley was with the optical splitter needing to be approved by the City, but that it hopefully won't affect the timeline. But you never indicated what that was.

I'd love to know what your estimated availability is for the 2400 block of Jefferson Ave and what FDA that is. And, to echo Zandr, additional communication for existing customers would go a long way - including reducing inquiries like this one to you and your CS team.

Thanks for all you do.
David

The issue I've got with estimating any availability date for central and Western Berkeley is that we are now going through a review process with the City related to the passive optical splitter cabinets. It's unclear yet to us how soon those will be approved. They've asked for photo-simulations, public notices, etc - and these items will change the time-line in ways that we cannot predict.

[dane]

Some great progress today: after obtaining the necessary permit last week to do the critical underground segment near the Berkeley central office, we completed that drilling and conduit placement this afternoon. Entry and exit pits are where the staff and cones are. https://imgur.com/a/Cn4bxFI

[maskofdestiny]

The issue I've got with estimating any availability date for central and Western Berkeley is that we are now going through a review process with the City related to the passive optical splitter cabinets. It's unclear yet to us how soon those will be approved. They've asked for photo-simulations, public notices, etc - and these items will change the time-line in ways that we cannot predict.

When you say Western Berkeley, does that include the area North of University and West of San Pablo? I saw a Sonic truck that looked like it was stringing fiber on Hearst near my place a week or so ago which made me optimistic that I might get upgraded to fiber soon.

[sniper1rfa]

Yep, but support capabilities become more limited and if we have to dispatch, you'd have a truck-roll fee.

OK, we'll use the RG for a while - install is scheduled for thanksgiving morning.

Our internal network is solid, so do you get useful telemetry with the RG bridged?

[alxyang24]

I know this thread is for monitoring the progress now through Berkeley and I'm happy to report that I'm all hooked up as of today! My original installer was reassigned, but showed up anyway to give the new installer a heads up, install was fairly straightforward, got the ONT and SmartRG. Already moved from the SmartRG to an Ubiquiti Edgerouter ER-4 and getting great speeds, Wired download speeds are anywhere between 650-900 Mbps and uploads are almost always 900+ Mbps using Speedtest.com, sonic speedtest and dslreports speedtests. Probably will return the SmartRG after a few months.

I'm in FDA22 and the timeline was about the following:

11/5/17 - Pre-order with eta of April 2018
In-between - Delay emails
~06/17/18 - Sonic Fiber cabinet (LCP) shows up
~08/2018 - Fiber is strung
~09/2018 - Fiber is terminated at LCP
10/15/18 - 'Sonic Gigabit Fiber network is active!' email
11/1/18 - 'Schedule Your Installation' email, install dates were about 2 weeks out, earliest possible was 11/15, I choose 11/17 so I could be home
11/17/18 - Install Day!

Thanks to Jerry and Assad for their awesome work with the install today!

I believe I'm going to post in the voice forum as I have some questions about the voice features and playing around with the Sonic Communicator app.

In all, I'm very pleased with service and install so far. Sure there were and are delays, but its not easy to build out an entire network by scratch! I'm very supportive of what Dane is doing and the level of communication that he provides is amazing.

I think the only minor improvement I could see is (and maybe I'll get an email with this information later) at the end of the install, if the techs can leave a piece of paper of whats next or quick resources on what they just got with sonic. I vaguely knew about the sonic mobile communicator app, but setting up voicemail and such took a little digging and I could see some people not even knowing about these things that come with the fiber install.