Serving San Francisco apartments and condos, using existing fiber | Hacker News Reader

Serving San Francisco apartments and condos, using existing fiber

googlefiberblog.blogspot.com

62 pointsarchiebunker29 comments

Official Google link http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/san-francisco-go...

Apartments and condos only, should have known better than to get my hopes up for a few seconds https://www.evernote.com/l/APMXftBrJ9pDqYaymNPSZ59E-4jMUpl8a...

Thanks. We changed the URL to that from http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/24/google-fiber-san-francisc....

Disappointing that engadget mention AT&T but not Sonic. I got my fiber install 7 weeks ago in Outer Sunset and it's been flawless.

Congrats on Sonic Fiber! FWIW I tried their DSL service in sunset (they sublease from AT&T) - speed was unreliable even with dual lines, HOWEVER hands down the best customer service experience I've had and not just with a internet/telephone company. I talked to Nick from Sonic who really knew what he was doing as we tried troubleshooting and agreed within 10 minutes that my location was simply too far to get good connection. They cancelled the line and refunded 100% of the costs with zero hassle. I can't wait to get Sonic Fiber, hopefully they start installing on east of 22nd Ave soon.

I'll plug Sonic here too. My dual-line speed is okay. But, the customer service is downright pleasant. Every time I've called I've spoken to someone who not only has a clue, but also is able to actually get stuff done.

Yup, I'll third that. DSL is hampered by the fact it's AT&T. If you can get 'pure' Sonic fiber, revel in that. Aside from their great customer service, they are also pro-privacy and no caps! We have FTTN service and I sync a lot of data to and from work. It's nice to know that they don't play that lame game of limits.

It'll be interesting to see how Google works out. Can't recommend Somic enough tho.

Adding in for Sonic's fantastic support. I was only able to get DSL at my art gallery / commercial unit in Downtown LA (Cable internet was going to cost an arm and leg).

Primary purpose was live video streaming and they helped me switch my DSL to a different Annex type to give me more upload bandwidth.

Isn't their fibre actually resold AT&T fibre?

Their FTTN is, yes. If you can get fibre to the premises, that's all them and you're golden.

+1 for sonic support.

This seems more limited in scope than the article implies, as it will only use existing fiber. From the announcement: "San Francisco—where we’ll bring service to some apartments, condos, and affordable housing properties, using existing fiber."

I can't help but wonder what the impact will be on housing prices. I imagine that having access to Fiber will add a not-insignificant premium to what the market would be willing to pay for an equivalent non-Fiber unit.

You have to look at fiber's effect on aggregate demand, not just the demand at a particular price-point and location. Will it convince more people to move to the area as a whole? Quite possibly, but it's unlikely to be a huge deal. I suspect that there's much more effect in terms of techies moving out of non-fiber units and into fiber ones, making the fiber ones more expensive and the non-fiber less.

Excited for this, but I wonder about the channel lineup. I am a huge sports fan and Xfinity provides ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, CBS Sports, Fox Sports Net, NFL Redzone, NFL network, etc. Does fiber offer those channels? Plus, I have to give Xfinity a bit of credit. The X1 system is actually pretty good. I can set recording on my DVR from my phone on the go and even watch live TV from my phone or tablet.

For Austin they offer[0] decent number of sports channels, probably the same for San Francisco

[0] https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/channels/

Maybe the relative density of SFO will speed deployment compared to some other cities? Like sprawling Atlanta, for one.

"using existing fibre"

SFO is an airport. SF is a city.

So is PDX. People still use it to refer to Portland. This is not a new concept.

Using the FAA location identifier for the main airport serving a US city as an abbreviation for a city is a not-uncommon practice for cities that don't have other well-established abbreviations.

So, PDX for Portland is consistent with that.

SFO for San Francisco is not, for the reason pointed out in GP, just as IAD for Washington, D.C. wouldn't be.

San FranciscO

It works.

Happens in Canada as well. People use YYZ to refer to Toronto pretty frequently.

> SFO is an airport.

And, despite the name, not even in San Francisco.

And then there's ATL. It's the airport code and refers to the city, but the airport isn't in the city.

Ah, but you haven't seen the SF bureaucracy, corruption and NIMBYism.

I always wondered why Google did not include it's home market during the initial rollout.

AFAIK, there are plenty of cities in the Bay Area that have fiber and that Google will choose to expand beyond just SF. Some of us like not living in SF.

The Bay Area other than South Bay is difficult. My city, San Leandro, has public/private "partnership" fiber in the ground [0] for businesses. When I contacted them about residential, they let me know that they'd had a look and the demand just wasn't there.

I took it further to see if I could get my building on it through one of the commercial partners (PAXIO) but the costs of building it out were pretty high (~$15k was what I was told) and I couldn't convince my building management that paying for it would work out for them.

I really hope Google or someone does do this for the rest of the bay area but I think it's more likely that Comcast will bring out DOCSIS 3.1 and everyone'll be happy enough that nothing will happen.

[0]: http://litsanleandro.com/

It's still not in Mountain View.

Maybe now the HN community will stop complaining whenever a new city is added...

I'm still waiting for google fiber to come to even half of Austin.

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