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Oh my gosh, they are out there string the fiber on the poles right now!!! I was expecting to wait until august as Dane said, but the guy says it's going to be soon =). I'm gonna go with the Pace router for year one, since it's a wash with the promo, but wondering if my Belkin 900AC gigabit router will work with sonic fiber - I would use it after the first year assuming the connection gave me an equivalent wireless signal. Any reason it wouldn't work?

Don't get too excited: the fiber they are placing will reach the homes, but the interconnection to the Berkeley CO is dependent upon permits which we have not yet received. Your neighborhood's interconnection is via the Berkeley central office, which is South of the UC campus - and reached via the region we're still waiting for approval for.

So, the August date is likely to be a best-case, assuming that issue is resolved. And it could slip, if the issue isn't resolved soon.

This is also the situation stalling a couple other FDAs in Northern Berkeley, for example the region around Creston, and also Keith Ave/Tamalpais Rd/Shasta Rd.

We are working closely with the City, and hope to have this resolved soon. Please do not contact the City, I think that would just add confusion and potentially further delay us.

Well, way to be a downer, Dane, lolz. Not sure why Albany fiber goes through Berkeley, but anything going through Berkeley takes forever and is just a giant pain in the rear, sigh. Mostly Berkeley does nothing and what they do takes ages and ages, and there is no point in contacting them, they are pretty useless. Sigh.

linberl1 wrote:Well, way to be a downer, Dane, lolz. Not sure why Albany fiber goes through Berkeley, but anything going through Berkeley takes forever and is just a giant pain in the rear, sigh. Mostly Berkeley does nothing and what they do takes ages and ages, and there is no point in contacting them, they are pretty useless. Sigh.

Sorry for the bad news, it's just the way the regional distribution works out. There are two central offices in the region, and while generally things North of University go to one and South of University go to the other, there's some crossover for us for a few areas, including yours.

I'm in the same situation and just found this thread so I'll continue here. I've also been waiting for years.

If the fiber goes north across Solano why would it connect to a Berkeley CO and not the Albany CO?
What CO did the blocks N S W and W of the 900 block of Evelyn that got gigabit fiber last year connect to? They got permits.

ds

sanger wrote:I'm in the same situation and just found this thread so I'll continue here. I've also been waiting for years.

If the fiber goes north across Solano why would it connect to a Berkeley CO? What CO did the blocks N S W and W of the 900 block of Evelyn that got gigabit fiber last year connect to?

ds

The others connect to the Albany CO. But it's at capacity, so the new FDA - and two others in the hills to the West - will be fed out of the Berkeley CO.

Oh, wow, that really sux.... my friend who lives a block over gets fiber before me (although I've been a Sonic customer for a decade +). And she gets connected to the Albany CO and I'm stuck waiting on Berkeley - which has a barely functioning administration. Permits in Berkeley can take a year or even longer. I don't suppose there's any way to add on capacity to the Albany CO? I'm assuming you left room there for potential new Albany customers on the blocks you already set up; maybe putting long-time Sonic customers into those slots would make good customer service sense? This just seems wrong....we've already had to wait while the rest of Albany got connected and now we're getting booted to Berkeley's CO while other brand new Sonic customers in Albany will get hooked up right away. Doesn't seem right...

linberl1 wrote:Oh, wow, that really sux.... my friend who lives a block over gets fiber before me (although I've been a Sonic customer for a decade +). And she gets connected to the Albany CO and I'm stuck waiting on Berkeley - which has a barely functioning administration. Permits in Berkeley can take a year or even longer. I don't suppose there's any way to add on capacity to the Albany CO? I'm assuming you left room there for potential new Albany customers on the blocks you already set up; maybe putting long-time Sonic customers into those slots would make good customer service sense? This just seems wrong....we've already had to wait while the rest of Albany got connected and now we're getting booted to Berkeley's CO while other brand new Sonic customers in Albany will get hooked up right away. Doesn't seem right...

The Albany central office has no available conduits into it, so we simply cannot get another fiber backbone cable in there. As a result, we've got a few FDAs that will feed out of the adjacent CO in Berkeley. This wouldn't be noticeable or material, except that Berkeley has now ceased issuing permits for our construction, resulting in a delay. We hope to have that resolved soon.

The area where you are located has been a challenging one to physically reach, because the City of Albany moved the utilities on Marin Ave underground. But because the City has no dig once policy, there is no available conduit for carriers like Sonic to use. This required some creative re-routing to the North, to partially fill that gap - making some of the blocks in that region a unique project, and that resulted in delay. I'm sorry for that impact, and we share your interest in seeing it completed as quickly as possible.

Dane. This came in a Sonic advert this week:

In the last month, Sonic made great strides in addressing permitting hold-ups in various cities, including yours. Sonic team members, including our CEO and CTO, met with city officials to help form final city development agreements, this gets you one step closer to the fast, friendly internet you deserve. We look forward to more significant progress in the very near future.

Does this mean the permitting is resolved and you can connect our fiber soon (900 block of Evelyn in Albany)?

Yep, the make-ready and strand placement work for the necessary backbone interconnection to the main Berkeley central office is underway now.