How Long From Letter to Service?

[majortom]

Our neighborhood received letters announcing Sonic service in our area. From what I understand, this is a pre-construction announcement. My question is how long does it usually take from that letter to service being available? Does Sonic usually send mailings to a large area to determine which they will build out, or does a letter indicate that they are really planning to build soon? What is the normal time for construction? When Verizon started building in Redondo Beach, it took a long time (maybe around two or three years) before FiOS was available on the North side of town. Should we be expecting service in months, years, or maybe never (if they do not get enough response to their postcards)?

It would be great to have 10Gb/s service and my next door neighbor is interested in business service (he needs static IP).

[dane]

Best bet is to visit the http://Sonic.com website and order service for your location, then you can keep track of the estimated completion date in the “Fiber Status” section of the http://members.Sonic.net/ portal. If a date isn’t yet available, it’ll show that too, that’d mean we’re awaiting items outside of our control generally.

[wyeager3]

I hadn't seen the Fiber Status feature before. That's cool! Does it make sense that for my address (south east Petaluma) the status is "Evaluating" when Sonic workers have been trenching, pulling fiber, and splicing on my block since last November? Feels like one of those progress bars that sits at 0% for a while until it finally jumps to 100%.

-Excited for Gigabit

[majortom]

Best bet is to visit the http://Sonic.com website and order service for your location, then you can keep track of the estimated completion date in the “Fiber Status” section of the http://members.Sonic.net/ portal. If a date isn’t yet available, it’ll show that too, that’d mean we’re awaiting items outside of our control generally.

I had already done that, but from the day that I got the postcard saying I could order it has always just shown "pre-construction" with no estimated date. That was why I asked the question. I do not need an exact date, just want to get a sense of what an average time is from pre-construction until fiber shows up at one's door. Even more valuable, what is the minimum time until one can get fiber. Just want to know if I should be checking every week, once a month, or not bothering for six months.

[dane]

If there is still not a date, I’d expect it to be 6+ months, but until we have all prerequisite items which are not within our control such as permits, we can’t even forecast a date.

Unfortunately over the last year and a half we have struggled with more and more cities which are either resisting or completely blocking competitive fiber deployment (while not blocking deployment by AT&T), so the uncertainty level is high until we’ve secured permits. We have also encountered changing conditions and new forms of delay in some cities which were on track towards what we thought were reasonable timetables, so that has resulted in a lot of schedule slippage for many of the projects that are near completion.

[artakamoose]

If there is still not a date, I’d expect it to be 6+ months, but until we have all prerequisite items which are not within our control such as permits, we can’t even forecast a date.

Unfortunately over the last year and a half we have struggled with more and more cities which are either resisting or completely blocking competitive fiber deployment (while not blocking deployment by AT&T), so the uncertainty level is high until we’ve secured permits. We have also encountered changing conditions and new forms of delay in some cities which were on track towards what we thought were reasonable timetables, so that has resulted in a lot of schedule slippage for many of the projects that are near completion.

What cities are doing this? They should be named and shamed either by a) having your customers and potential customers write in to their local representatives and/or 2) putting together a news story about the obstruction. Arstechnica has a pretty good history of getting stuff moving for internet customers who are drawing the short straw from their ISP. Here's the latest article:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... r-a-month/

I just emailed the writer of that article about this.

[dane]

That’s certainly an approach we have considered. We started by asking elected City leadership to assist, but in the end we found it to be counter-productive. Staff in some cities simply made it worse in response to any external pressure.

Today we just try to navigate the process as quietly as we can. And we’ve learned, if a city is initially hostile to broadband development, it’s not likely to improve and we should spend our time, money and attention building elsewhere instead.

[majortom]

If there is still not a date, I’d expect it to be 6+ months, but until we have all prerequisite items which are not within our control such as permits, we can’t even forecast a date.

Wow, that is a long time. I am curious why you announce service and take pre-orders (you even took my credit card information) before you are even ready to begin construction.

[quote[Unfortunately over the last year and a half we have struggled with more and more cities which are either resisting or completely blocking competitive fiber deployment (while not blocking deployment by AT&T), so the uncertainty level is high until we’ve secured permits.[/quote]

That makes it even more odd to me that you announce service without even knowing if you can get permits (or more importantly, that you would collect credit card information before you have permits). Do pre-orders affect where you build out first, or even if you really build in a market?

We have also encountered changing conditions and new forms of delay in some cities which were on track towards what we thought were reasonable timetables, so that has resulted in a lot of schedule slippage for many of the projects that are near completion.

I totally understand that and it must be very frustrating. It does completely change my perspective though. We currently have service with Frontier and have been expanding capacity for our production company (not co-located, but in another building very close by). We have been negotiating with both Frontier and Spectrum for 10Gb/s service with active Ethernet for that location, and I had been slowing that process with the hope that we could consider you as a possible alternative. This tells me that is unlikely to be the case at least in our first year. Oh well.

We have lived in the area since before Verizon deployed FiOS. Their process was very different. They sent us a mailer when they were taking pre-orders, but it was a matter of weeks until they started scheduling appointments, not months or years. It does frustrate me that I spent energy talking to my neighbors trying to get them to sign up, not realizing that it was almost certainly over six months before any of us would see you as a real option.

Thanks for the information, even if it is disappointing. I do wish your post card had set expectations more appropriately.

[artakamoose]

That’s certainly an approach we have considered. We started by asking elected City leadership to assist, but in the end we found it to be counter-productive. Staff in some cities simply made it worse in response to any external pressure.

Today we just try to navigate the process as quietly as we can. And we’ve learned, if a city is initially hostile to broadband development, it’s not likely to improve and we should spend our time, money and attention building elsewhere instead.

I'm really sorry to hear that. It's so sad that city staff isn't listening to the people voters have put in place to run the city, and who should be their ultimate authority. I certainly hope this isn't a case similar to the recent Public Works saga in SF.