Fiber!

[Guest]

How's San Jose doing? Specifically, Downtown. ;-)

Even worse than Millbrae, it's in about 90th place among cities at this point.

We're working on these stats, and will release more details in the next few months. Thanks.

This was a quote from January..and almost have a year later, your most recent quote is you think you will probably release more details in a few more months.

I am just wondering if you guys are still gathering the stats, and they keep changing, thus causing you to change the message, or whether other products/projects have pushed them down the list.

I love to see you testing/playing with new stuff, but would love to see an overall blog post regarding what you all are hoping to do, testing and hoping to be able to provide, etc.

A recent tweet had you getting good results from VDSL2+ or whatever. I would love to see if you could have a blog post of the type of customer where you would hope that would be feasible, and timeframe for when you guys hope to be able to roll it out.

I also believe the testing was with a dual bonded fusion pair...though you have stopped offering that for residential, correct? Are you hoping to offer that again to us Techie nerds who really want Fiber but can not be served yet?

I would also be interested in hearing your thoughts on TV service, which you have also talked about testing.

[dane]

Agreed - we owe tons of updates on all of these topics. I've got a lot going on right now, but will make some efforts to be more transparent and to publish some information soon.

[ben]

As for the chances Bennett Valley (or any other neighborhood) will be built with Fiber by Sonic, that depends primarily on take rate in the neighborhood. We'll be focusing on our areas of highest uptake, because with fixed construction costs to pass all homes, how many of them subscribe is the primary driver of feasibility. We will be releasing a lot more on this topic, as well as area rankings, in the next few months.

Thanks for your response. I hope you aren't basing your decisions on where to build out fiber solely on Fusion take rates. If so, places like Bennett Valley that have poor (if not nonexistent) take rates due to being too far away from CO's will never get fiber. IMHO you should targeting areas that have the highest potential for adding new customers instead of areas that already have a lot of customers. I say that not just because I happen to live in one of those areas but also because I think it makes good fiscal sense.

[mwedel]

Just curious about status of Santa Clara - that is another one where there is a city municipal utility - who owns the poles there?

[ionas]

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[rmoniz]

"Agreed - we owe tons of updates on all of these topics. I've got a lot going on right now, but will make some efforts to be more transparent and to publish some information soon."

Hi, I'd like the update now. The fiber has been teasing me from the poles outside my house for two years.

Thank you
rmoniz

[dane]

"Agreed - we owe tons of updates on all of these topics. I've got a lot going on right now, but will make some efforts to be more transparent and to publish some information soon."

Hi, I'd like the update now. The fiber has been teasing me from the poles outside my house for two years.

Thank you
rmoniz

In the last four weeks, most of the fiber in Sebastopol has been hung, and "local convergence point" cabinets have been set on piles. These boxes aggregate up to 288 homes downstream from them onto 12 fibers. Next up is splicing of the distribution fibers into the LCP cabinets, and then splicing of the LCP cabinets to the backbone fiber.

[mjcunnin]

Hi Dane, I gather that you'll say more about fiber rollout plans when the time is right, but in the meantime can I ask a couple of basic questions to make sure I understand?

1. The general idea is to go city-by-city, starting where there's the greatest percentage of households having Fusion service? Roughly speaking, what's a "good" percentage for a city that hopes to be somewhere on the front-ish end of the deployment schedule?

2. Though Brentwood offers lovely city-owned conduit, and some other towns own utility poles, the fact that PG&E and AT&T own the poles in most Bay Area towns is not a deal-breaker?

[dane]

Hi Dane, I gather that you'll say more about fiber rollout plans when the time is right, but in the meantime can I ask a couple of basic questions to make sure I understand?

1. The general idea is to go city-by-city, starting where there's the greatest percentage of households having Fusion service? Roughly speaking, what's a "good" percentage for a city that hopes to be somewhere on the front-ish end of the deployment schedule?

2. Though Brentwood offers lovely city-owned conduit, and some other towns own utility poles, the fact that PG&E and AT&T own the poles in most Bay Area towns is not a deal-breaker?

Viability is determined by a combination of the level of interest in the community, and the construction costs to serve the area. Percentage take rate requirements vary based upon the costs involved.

Construction cost for the fiber build-out of course vary in each community based upon a variety of factors: availability of conduit in all or a portion of the region, underground versus overhead utilities, ownership of the poles, and density of the housing.

While a city with widespread available conduit is the best case, and thus requires the lowest possible take rate, communities with more challenging construction conditions can still make the business model work if the take rate is higher.

In other words, it's up to you where we build, based upon the level of interest in our $40 Gigabit+Phone service in your community. We will measure that interest based upon signups for Fusion, and in areas where Fusion doesn't yet reach, based upon expressions of interest on the website.

[oddhack]

In other words, it's up to you where we build, based upon the level of interest in our $40 Gigabit+Phone service in your community. We will measure that interest based upon signups for Fusion, and in areas where Fusion doesn't yet reach, based upon expressions of interest on the website.

I'm not sure signups for Fusion will map very directly onto signups for fiber. ADSL2+ performance is so uneven, and even in the best case relatively to very slow for many customers, that many people who would love fiber will quite rationally not want Fusion as it exists today.