Gigabit Berkeley

[Clu42]

I know this thread is for monitoring the progress now through Berkeley and I'm happy to report that I'm all hooked up as of today! My original installer was reassigned, but showed up anyway to give the new installer a heads up, install was fairly straightforward, got the ONT and SmartRG. Already moved from the SmartRG to an Ubiquiti Edgerouter ER-4 and getting great speeds, Wired download speeds are anywhere between 650-900 Mbps and uploads are almost always 900+ Mbps using Speedtest.com, sonic speedtest and dslreports speedtests. Probably will return the SmartRG after a few months.

I'm in FDA22 and the timeline was about the following:

11/5/17 - Pre-order with eta of April 2018
In-between - Delay emails :)
~06/17/18 - Sonic Fiber cabinet (LCP) shows up
~08/2018 - Fiber is strung
~09/2018 - Fiber is terminated at LCP
10/15/18 - 'Sonic Gigabit Fiber network is active!' email
11/1/18 - 'Schedule Your Installation' email, install dates were about 2 weeks out, earliest possible was 11/15, I choose 11/17 so I could be home
11/17/18 - Install Day!

Thanks to Jerry and Assad for their awesome work with the install today!

I believe I'm going to post in the voice forum as I have some questions about the voice features and playing around with the Sonic Communicator app.

In all, I'm very pleased with service and install so far. Sure there were and are delays, but its not easy to build out an entire network by scratch! I'm very supportive of what Dane is doing and the level of communication that he provides is amazing.

I think the only minor improvement I could see is (and maybe I'll get an email with this information later) at the end of the install, if the techs can leave a piece of paper of whats next or quick resources on what they just got with sonic. I vaguely knew about the sonic mobile communicator app, but setting up voicemail and such took a little digging and I could see some people not even knowing about these things that come with the fiber install.

I agree with your support for Sonic and Dane. My pre-order install date was September 2018. And going by your timeline. My actual install date will probably be Feb or March of next year. But I'm patient, as it will be totally worth it to escape from either Comca$t or AT$T, who have data caps, and are totally anti-consumer, by lobbying congress and the FCC to kill Net Neutrality.

[cmeisel]

Dane gave us a date of end of Feb. so with that timeline listed above we can potentially tag on another month. I was very disappointed to learn that installs are not done in the order received so it potentially is last come first serve. I was really hoping it was the order received but I guess this is a second chance for people to apply early for an install date once it goes live.

[aanon4]

So my install date is Thursday (Thanksgiving, somewhat surprisingly) but as of now, I have no fiber drop to my house. Checking with various friends who already had their installs, this usually happens a week or so before. Should I be worried? Sonic did drop fiber to various of my neighbors last week, but not to me.

[dane]

Dane gave us a date of end of Feb. so with that timeline listed above we can potentially tag on another month. I was very disappointed to learn that installs are not done in the order received so it potentially is last come first serve. I was really hoping it was the order received but I guess this is a second chance for people to apply early for an install date once it goes live.

Once an FDA goes live, the drop crews come in and do all of the drops, sequentially down each street. It's really more practical than bouncing around the region all day. And each crew can accomplish 20+ per day, so it goes very quickly. As those complete, folks will see invitations to schedule their in-home installation. Don't worry, once the FDA goes live, it's a pretty quick process.

[aanon4]

Dane gave us a date of end of Feb. so with that timeline listed above we can potentially tag on another month. I was very disappointed to learn that installs are not done in the order received so it potentially is last come first serve. I was really hoping it was the order received but I guess this is a second chance for people to apply early for an install date once it goes live.

Once an FDA goes live, the drop crews come in and do all of the drops, sequentially down each street. It's really more practical than bouncing around the region all day. And each crew can accomplish 20+ per day, so it goes very quickly. As those complete, folks will see invitations to schedule their in-home installation. Don't worry, once the FDA goes live, it's a pretty quick process.

Oddly, although I've had a Sonic Fiber Pre-Order on my Sonic bill since May, once the FDA went live and Sonic went down my street dropping cables to houses, they didn't drop one at my house

[lefish]

There are lots of references to the various "FDA's", which I can assume mean Fiber Distribution Area or similar. Is there a way to find out what FDA I'm in? Address is 2422 Jefferson Ave, between Dwight & Channing. Thanks!

Also, Dane, do you have a guess as to when the City will make a decision about how they plan to handle permitting/approval of the optical splitters on poles? Not the completion date, but essentially when you'll be able to more accurately project completion?

Thanks!
David

[aanon4]

Dane gave us a date of end of Feb. so with that timeline listed above we can potentially tag on another month. I was very disappointed to learn that installs are not done in the order received so it potentially is last come first serve. I was really hoping it was the order received but I guess this is a second chance for people to apply early for an install date once it goes live.

Once an FDA goes live, the drop crews come in and do all of the drops, sequentially down each street. It's really more practical than bouncing around the region all day. And each crew can accomplish 20+ per day, so it goes very quickly. As those complete, folks will see invitations to schedule their in-home installation. Don't worry, once the FDA goes live, it's a pretty quick process.

Oddly, although I've had a Sonic Fiber Pre-Order on my Sonic bill since May, once the FDA went live and Sonic went down my street dropping cables to houses, they didn't drop one at my house

Well Sonic trucks have descended on my neighborhood again today and are installing about 4 drops to various houses around me ... including mine. Nice people and super helpful.

[dane]

Well Sonic trucks have descended on my neighborhood again today and are installing about 4 drops to various houses around me ... including mine. Nice people and super helpful.

Awesome, glad to hear you're seeing the progress.

Clearly we've struggled with meeting our construction timeline estimates in this region, as we've worked to adjust to the different processes from San Francisco's largely automated system, as well as changes to pole engineering and processing, vendor scale-up, etc. Lots of challenges - but we're making headway, and it's great to see more and more of the folks in this thread reporting that they're getting installed!

[dane]

FDA 32 just went live!

FDA 32: Santa Barbara Rd from Arlington Ave to San Luis Rd. San Luis Rd from Arlington Ave to Montrose Rd. Northampton Ave from Spruce St to Santa Barbara Rd. Southampton Ave from San Luis Rd to San Diego Rd.

[dane]

FDA 12A and B are now online:

FDA 12A: Virginia St and Cedar St from 6th St to San Pablo Ave. 10th St, 9th St, 8th St, and 7th St from Cedar St to Delaware St.
FDA 12B: 7th St, 8th St, 9th St, and 10th St from Delaware St to University Ave.