Fiber for The Mission in San Francisco

[ladr]

I'm wondering when Sonic will get fiber to the Mission district of San Francisco, and I'm hoping it's soon.

I believe the Mission contains the highest percentage of geeks in the entire city, and by geeks I mean internet developers. I believe that Sonic would get a much higher rate of uptake of the service here than anywhere else in SF.

The buildings are multi-family, which makes it a bit more difficult to connect, but which also means that each connection is likely to serve a number of customers.

One way you could gauge this would be to have a pre-signup page online where people can register their interest in the service. That way you could prioritize based on the density of interested customers in each area.

[wa2ibm]

There is, kind of. Sonic uses their roster of Legacy ADSL and Fusion customers as a gauge of where to install fiber next. This is especially true for Fusion customers. If/when an area with existing Fusion customers has fiber deployed, all Fusion customers will be contacted to convert to fiber.

Thus, if you want fiber in the mission, get all of your geeky friends there to sign up for Fusion. I realize this isn't a guarantee that fiber will be deployed there soon, but it's one way to express interest. As they say, money talks!

Bill

[ladr]

I still suggest a pre-signup page which would track people who want gigabit fiber in any give area.

Fusion signups are not a reliable way to gauge interest in gigabit fiber, because in many areas Fusion is slower than other available options such as Comcast. So people who want the fastest available service won't sign up for Fusion although they would sign up for gigabit fiber.

[Fred]

Instead of forcing people to sign up for Fusion or legacy DSL which we may not want, why not have a pre-enrollment campaign, like Google Fiberhood does, i.e. recruit your neighbors and ante up $50 to be on the priority list?

Requiring potential customers to pay homage by buying an inferior product, in the hopes of being eligible for an upgrade, is no way to run a railroad.

[dane]

Instead of forcing people to sign up for Fusion or legacy DSL which we may not want, why not have a pre-enrollment campaign, like Google Fiberhood does, i.e. recruit your neighbors and ante up $50 to be on the priority list?

Requiring potential customers to pay homage by buying an inferior product, in the hopes of being eligible for an upgrade, is no way to run a railroad.

Well, we clearly don't consider Fusion to be an inferior product, but I recognize that in some locations it will be slower than Cable due to loop length.

We are considering a Fiber pre-registration concept. It's been interesting to watch Google engage in their Kansas City roll-out, and I'll be real interested to see how many neighborhoods end up qualifying.

[jmunowitch]

I, too, would be interested in a pre-enrollment campaign in SF.

[paul.manangan]

Well, we clearly don't consider Fusion to be an inferior product, but I recognize that in some locations it will be slower than Cable due to loop length.

We are considering a Fiber pre-registration concept. It's been interesting to watch Google engage in their Kansas City roll-out, and I'll be real interested to see how many neighborhoods end up qualifying.

Dane-
I have to disagree. You clearly have an inferior product. I was lured into your bait and switch scheme with promises of up to 20mbps for $40 what I got was 3-5mbps for $65 that drops continually. When I call customer service they run their tests that indicate that we have 5.6mbps running into our modem which is what we should be getting given our distance from your CO and any degradation is likely due to my wireless set up.
While I an not a fan of AT&T they never tried to tell me that I was receiving more than 6mbps and they were upfront about charging me $90 for it. And the service didn't continually drop off.
While I will be cancelling my service shortly, I suggest you sprinkle a little more truth in your marketing and have your sales people clearly advise their prospects of what the actual anticipated download/upload speeds would be for an address since that information is so readily available. I was so ready to support your business, unfortunately your business is not ready to support the general consumer. Thanks for the headaches.

PRM

[bbusby]

For what it's worth, I can say the following:

- For roughly a year, we had frequent retrain drops and the only way to get a reasonably stable connection was to cap the line at roughly half its theoretical speed. PG&E came through and restrung the power feed for the whole block due to a complaint from a ham radio operator about arcing causing RF interference (RFI). Hey presto! from 4.5 to 12 Mbits and rock stable. From the FAQs I believe RFI from streetlights is a common problem for DSL customers.

- My 40$/mo rate is, of course, goosed by various taxes and regulatory cost pass-throughs to 50 beans a month. Even the SF house is maybe 2$ more for their extra voice line charges. Two houses are thus about 105$ month. You must be in a VERY high tax area to hit 65$/mo.

- My only affiliation with Sonic is as a customer.

[kavan]

what I got was 3-5mbps for $65 that drops continually. When I call customer service they run their tests that indicate that we have 5.6mbps running into our modem which is what we should be getting given our distance from your CO and any degradation is likely due to my wireless set up.

This is strange. I may have the wrong circuit but it appears you are synced at 7.5Mbps and the circuit has been registered as stable since May with no retrains in the most recent 12 hour record. I'd be happy to take a closer look if I do have the wrong circuit, you can email support@sonic.net with your account name or phone number and attn: kavan in the subject and someone will bring it to my attention.

[ladr]

So, back to the subject. Please don't hijack the thread guys:

- When might fiber come to the Mission?

- Will Sonic have a preregistration page so that they can see which areas of the city have the most interested customers?