Russian Hill has telephone poles

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
7 posts Page 1 of 1
by Niko » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:28 am
Hello,

Would it be possible for your firm to consider adding service to Russian Hill district in San Francisco that has telephone poles? Has anyone done a study?
I realize your fast internet service is in the Richmond and Sunset districts of the city which is great, but San Franciscans on Russian Hill need another option to compete with the Comcast monopoly and or oligopoly. If you need anymore input or have any questions please send them to me. I have lived in the city for 25 years and we have needed another internet option since the internet was invented!

Thank you. Have a nice day.
by dane » Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:07 am
Niko wrote:Hello,

Would it be possible for your firm to consider adding service to Russian Hill district in San Francisco that has telephone poles? Has anyone done a study?
I realize your fast internet service is in the Richmond and Sunset districts of the city which is great, but San Franciscans on Russian Hill need another option to compete with the Comcast monopoly and or oligopoly. If you need anymore input or have any questions please send them to me. I have lived in the city for 25 years and we have needed another internet option since the internet was invented!

Thank you. Have a nice day.
Yes, we are looking at all portions of SF that have aerial utilities. But due to the City of San Francisco's policies which disallow new trenchless utility construction, some aerial regions do end up isolated, so even where utilities are aerial in the last segment, deployment is not universally feasible. But we'll build everywhere it's possible for a new utility to do so under SF's current regulations!
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by cvchase » Mon Sep 16, 2019 4:21 pm
Hi Dane,

This has been a burning issue since Sonic started deploying fiber in San Francisco to why certain streets can't get fast fiber service when a block away there are happy customers. Have never been able to get a straight answer when I call Sonic support, always a "manana" or maybe answer.

Been trying to understand what this issue is with running the fiber in existing utility conduit - specifically on 9th Avenue (i.e. between Judah and Pacheco) in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. As a property owner, I had to pay when utilities were installed underground. It would seem to me that access to the conduit should be universal or shared - also realize we are dealing with entrenched interests and bureaucracy.

AT&T can't even offer fiber on 9th Avenue so most of us are stuck with DSL speed or having to submit to the cable monopolies. I am resisting moving to cable Internet providers to Comcast or AT&T yet I need the faster speeds for my work. Want to support Sonic as the team and service have been excellent to work with over the years. How can I help?

Who do I contact in SF government other than my supervisor (sadly the incumbent is useless)? San Francisco is supposed to be a world class technology hub...

Thanks,

Cliff.
by Larns576 » Mon Sep 16, 2019 6:46 pm
If you want laws changed to allow ISPs equal access to the conduits, try contacting the Mayor. You can also ask the conduit owners, ATT and Comcast, to share but that's unlikely to happen as it would not be beneficial to them.

Farrell was the last person to try to pass a microtrenching initiative, but a recent poll showed that the public wasn't too interested. No one since then has picked it up. It's pretty much dead now as the new mayor only cares about homelessness.

The last thing is bad/overloaded poles. Sonic isnt allowed to repair or reinforce them. Only the pole owners are, so some blocks get skipped during deployment.

Unfortunately it looks like nothing is changing any time soon.
by dane » Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:43 pm
cvchase wrote:Hi Dane,
Been trying to understand what this issue is with running the fiber in existing utility conduit - specifically on 9th Avenue (i.e. between Judah and Pacheco) in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. As a property owner, I had to pay when utilities were installed underground. It would seem to me that access to the conduit should be universal or shared - also realize we are dealing with entrenched interests and bureaucracy.
It would seem that way, but unfortunately it's not. You were required to put in conduit, for three companies: PG&E, AT&T and Comcast. (Oh, and probably water, sewer and gas lines too). That's it. This is a holdover from the days of monopoly telephone service and a single Cable franchise.

The solution is for cities to adopt a "Dig Once" policy, that assures that when development and undergrounding occurs, there is conduit which is available for additional companies beyond these. And while SF does have a Dig Once policy, we haven't seen it working well, and SF seems unwilling to enable competitive deployment, with no allowance for commonly used trenchless construction methods like microtrenching or even commonly used directional boring.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by a-b » Thu Sep 26, 2019 10:49 pm
dane wrote: It would seem that way, but unfortunately it's not. You were required to put in conduit, for three companies: PG&E, AT&T and Comcast. (Oh, and probably water, sewer and gas lines too). That's it. This is a holdover from the days of monopoly telephone service and a single Cable franchise.

The solution is for cities to adopt a "Dig Once" policy, that assures that when development and undergrounding occurs, there is conduit which is available for additional companies beyond these. And while SF does have a Dig Once policy, we haven't seen it working well, and SF seems unwilling to enable competitive deployment, with no allowance for commonly used trenchless construction methods like microtrenching or even commonly used directional boring.
Is that is a reason why the transition from ATT fiber to the Sonic fiber takes so much time?
by dane » Fri Sep 27, 2019 2:24 pm
a-b wrote:Is that is a reason why the transition from ATT fiber to the Sonic fiber takes so much time?
Not sure I understand the question.

Where Sonic fiber has been built today, we connect members to that now. Where it has not yet, we connect members using leased copper and our own network equipment (our Fusion service) or using AT&T's IP network via copper or fiber (our IP Broadband service).

As our fiber network continues to expand, we migrate those customers to our own network. That process takes just a few days once the network is deployed, but deployment can take 12-24 months in each community where we build.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
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