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Comment by firloop | Hacker News Reader

Link to the map itself: https://thatdan.github.io/sonic_fiber/

That's cool. Is there data for outside of San Francisco? For example, Brentwood? I am considering moving to Brentwood since Sonic offers fiber there. Would like to learn more about their coverage.

As someone who used to live in Brentwood, the Brentwood fiber rollout was very disappointing. Sonic used to have maps of their planned rollout that now point to dead links [0]. The house I used to live in was marked as planned to receive fiber by fall 2016, but when I put in the address Sonic says they currently don't service it.

For those who don't know, Brentwood was slated to be one of the first places in the Bay Area to get fiber, mostly because Brentwood required fiber conduit houses built for all developments after 2000, and because its city council was fairly generous to Sonic themselves. I don't strictly blame Sonic here... they took a risk doing this and likely were unable to drum up the support and enthusiasm in the community that would make a true city-wide rollout economically feasible. Seeing Sonic's experience in Brentwood makes me believe that the only way FTTH will be vastly deployed in the US anytime soon is through government subsidy.

[0]: https://www.sonic.com/get-involved-brentwood-fiber

San Francisco's population density, willingness to pay for faster internet, and displeasure with Comcast will hopefully mean more success than Brentwood.

Thanks!

Data is specific based on the city's permits. If Brentwood has a site similar to http://bsm.sfdpw.org/ for pulling permits that would be a start. You can always check your address at https://www.sonic.com/availability too.

Thanks. I was like, noop, not gonna clone your repo, just show me the result.

It's interesting they seem to avoid the core city with all the high-rise condos and big companies focusing instead on mission hipsters and sunset grandmas.

i (think?) it might be related to the areas where services are still run by pole

I had Sonic Fiber in a high-rise in the SOMA/Rincon Hill neighborhood. Not sure why the permit data is not there but they definitely serve this area.

Interesting. Might be underground fiber. Permits are usually the same for blocking the street for manhole access and blocking the street for a bucket truck (Temporary Occupancy) but maybe neither of this was necessary and/or the fiber was pulled when the building was built.

I'm curious to see if the block your building is on has Sonic self-reporting has having gigabit service available. The FCC has a map at https://www.fcc.gov/maps/fixed-broadband-deployment-data/ but the data is 9 months old (ISPs are given 6 months to report data twice a year and the FCC publishes it about 3 months later)

Seems to be something weird going on in the bottom right - not sure if they really did put the fiber like that (seems unlikely), or visualisation error, or what

The data in the permits are just pairs of intersections. Sometimes there's some confusion on which part of the street is referenced in the permit vs the data from the city. Next time around I want to use the city's street shapefile to try and fix this.

There are other problems like the line that covers all of 23rd St which I don't believe is accurate and the line cutting across Golden Gate Park.

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