by
dane » Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:28 am
JAllenG wrote:What should I be looking for to (possibly) get excited about Sonic getting closer to my block? I'm in the 94703, three blocks away from the High School, and I've been passing by Sonic trucks near Delaware and North Berkeley Bart for months now (a good 15-20 blocks away from me).
Does every block need some sort of Sonic installation, one by one, before it can get to me? I see the trucks working on some sort of junction box on the poll near North Berkeley Bart, and I don't know if that same kind of box needs to be on every block or every few blocks.
For each section of roughly 250-500 homes, there is a passive splitter cabinet, where dedicated fibers to individual homes are patched into the passive optical network. As the name implies, these cabinets are passive: there are no electronics or equipment inside. Here's an out-take from the technology overview we posted a few years ago:
LCP -- Local Convergence Point -- a cabinet in the neighborhood which passively splits the connection from the OLT from one fiber to 32. The LCP cabinet generally hosts from 288 to 432 homes, and houses splitter cartridges that turn a single fiber from the OLT into 32 fibers which are then plugged into jacks which connect to homes. See an LCP cabinet here:
http://j.mp/1Eryj7P
(You can read the entire tech overview at:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3389)
So, it's not every block, but each fiber distribution area (FDA) has an LCP that needs to be spliced to the cables toward homes, and the cables toward the central office, where the active electronics are located.
And our current issue in Berkeley that has led to uncertainty about activation time-frames is that someone has objected to these cabinets, and they're now being subject to additional permitting and review. I am speculating, but I'd guess that someone thought that these were somehow small cellular or "5G" mobile related, and they didn't want to see wireless equipment or antennas deployed. If my speculation is correct in this, that's not the case - these are just fiber patching locations, without any power, antennas, EMF emission, etc. But now we're going through a process of submitting photo mockups of each location, public comment periods, etc. Hopefully we'll get that all signed off soon!