Concord Progress?

[sdnick484]

Any news on whether Concord (particularly the Dana Estates area) is moving forward? I have been pre-registered for over a year at this point and have watched my go-live month slip a half a dozen times however that normally happens before the month it's pointing to starts. At this point we are almost half way through the month and my date is still showing March; I also saw some Sonic construction work down the street a few weeks ago. Before I get my hopes up, I was hoping to know if it might actually be happening soon.

[syntaxsid1]

Hello,

We apologize for the lack of information about this. I will reach out to the powers that be and will update you once I have more information. Thank you for your patience.

[syntaxsid1]

Hello again,

Our Fiber Engineering team responded with this statement:

"This address is in FDA 31 which is still under construction. Our best estimate for go-lives would be the one listed on the fiber status tool, but those dates aren't always accurate unfortunately. The backbone to reach their FDA is still being worked on, but the permitting issues have been resolved and hopefully, the he doesn't need to wait too much longer"

It's good to hear that the permitting has been resolved. In most cases, this is usually the delay that drags on and is out of our direct control. Unfortunately, they weren't able to provide an accurate estimate due to where they are in the construction phase. The Fiber status tool will be the location where we will provide the most up-to-date information when it becomes available. We apologize for the delay and hope this comes to a resolution soon. Thank you for your continued patience as we work on this.

[sdnick484]

Hello again,

Our Fiber Engineering team responded with this statement:

"This address is in FDA 31 which is still under construction. Our best estimate for go-lives would be the one listed on the fiber status tool, but those dates aren't always accurate unfortunately. The backbone to reach their FDA is still being worked on, but the permitting issues have been resolved and hopefully, the he doesn't need to wait too much longer"

It's good to hear that the permitting has been resolved. In most cases, this is usually the delay that drags on and is out of our direct control. Unfortunately, they weren't able to provide an accurate estimate due to where they are in the construction phase. The Fiber status tool will be the location where we will provide the most up-to-date information when it becomes available. We apologize for the delay and hope this comes to a resolution soon. Thank you for your continued patience as we work on this.

Thank you for looking into this, hearing the permitting is addressed is definitely great news.

[sdnick484]

Well I made it until yesterday with the tool stating March 2024, but looks like I'm now targeting May. Fingers crossed that new date sticks...

[sdnick484]

Hello,

We apologize for the lack of information about this. I will reach out to the powers that be and will update you once I have more information. Thank you for your patience.

Any chance I can get another update on FDA 31? I'm hitting 15mo since sign up.

[miloseaa]

I’d love a real update as well.

Signed up in June of 2023 and at first thought I would have fiber by the end of summer. Then it’s been push back, and back, and back. It stuck at Aug. 2024 for a while but now it’s Dec. 2024.

If this new time sticks it would be 18 months from signup to installation but sadly I have little faith that I’ll have fiber in 2024.

[brandonc]

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry that the progression in Concord has been so slow and updates have been slim.

There have been some posts made by our CEO, Dane, regarding the reasons for the delays in Concord that I would recommend giving a read.

viewtopic.php?p=63058&hilit=concord#p63058

viewtopic.php?p=64401&hilit=concord#p64401

The TLDR is that most of the areas in development require temporary bypass poles to allow us to run our cables aerially. Unfortunately, the city seems to be blocking us from building said bypass poles, which has left us in a state of deadlock on progress in many areas. We are still working with the city to resolve this so we can continue deployment, but we don't know when we'll be able to at this time.

I apologize for the delays and inconvenience, but I hope that we can make some progress soon.

Kind regards,

[miloseaa]

Out of my frustration I decided to reach out to my councilmember whom quickly referred me to the city manager.

I just received a response and Valerie Barone, the city manager, stated:
“The City has had problems with cable providers putting up “temporary” bypass poles and then taking no actions or very slow actions to remove the temporary poles. Consequently, the City requires the utilities to confirm the temporary poles are going to be in-place for a year or less—i.e., that they are truly temporary poles. The speed with which Sonic complies with the City’s requirements is up to them, as our staff’s efforts to review their submittals takes only days.“

I wasn’t surprised that the city threw this back on Sonic but it did bring some insight to the issue. The question that comes to mind is whether these bypass poles are needed for “temporary bypass” or due to the fact that the existing poles can’t handle the loads and need replacement. If it’s the former then I don’t see why this is a delay unless Sonic hasn’t provided the necessary confirmation of the bypass pole’s removal. However if it is the latter, then this really is an unreasonable request from the city, since Sonic can not remove/replace a pole which isn’t theirs.

I plan to follow up with the city manager and loop in my councilmember too.

[brandonc]

Out of my frustration I decided to reach out to my councilmember whom quickly referred me to the city manager.

I just received a response and Valerie Barone, the city manager, stated:
“The City has had problems with cable providers putting up “temporary” bypass poles and then taking no actions or very slow actions to remove the temporary poles. Consequently, the City requires the utilities to confirm the temporary poles are going to be in-place for a year or less—i.e., that they are truly temporary poles. The speed with which Sonic complies with the City’s requirements is up to them, as our staff’s efforts to review their submittals takes only days.“

I wasn’t surprised that the city threw this back on Sonic but it did bring some insight to the issue. The question that comes to mind is whether these bypass poles are needed for “temporary bypass” or due to the fact that the existing poles can’t handle the loads and need replacement. If it’s the former then I don’t see why this is a delay unless Sonic hasn’t provided the necessary confirmation of the bypass pole’s removal. However if it is the latter, then this really is an unreasonable request from the city, since Sonic can not remove/replace a pole which isn’t theirs.

I plan to follow up with the city manager and loop in my councilmember too.

If the permanent pole from PG&E is available, we will always use it. The issue we typically face is that these poles are either overloaded or require repairs before new infrastructure can be placed on them. Which as you said, is out of our control since it's up to PG&E to manage. Our CEO, Dane, does constantly advocate for PG&E to complete these requests in a timely manner, but they unfortunately do seem to take their time (sometimes years) to do this still.

However, we take down the temporary poles as soon as we are able to place our infrastructure on permanent poles.