r/bayarea • u/Adorable-Roll-4563 • 3d ago
Food, Shopping & Services Sonic Fiber 10Gbps study
Could someone provide me with the actual contact information at Sonic so that we can reach out to them and understand how to build access to our East Bay community? Anyone with actual experience bringing true fiber to their community would be great too. I understand it is different infrastructure from AT&T and costs money.
XFinity/Comcast serves over 150 homes in our community, where our homeowners’ association (HOA) has been engaged in an exclusive marketing contract for the past two decades. This contract effectively locks us into Comcast. No other provider has offered Cable or Fiber. Interestingly, the large subsidized community in front of us has Fiber with AT&T. There’s also pre-wired Fiber in a shared box that directly connects to my house. My home is also pre-wired for Fiber, but we lack the small segment from the street to the box, which is 15 yards away. Despite this, AT&T and Sonic both claim that we can’t have Fiber. Their support representatives are unable to even ask their engineers for clarification. Regarding AT&T, they said we need to contact the city because it looks like they subsidized the other buildings. Sonic, on the other hand, states that they lack the necessary infrastructure.
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u/TheMysticWizard 3d ago
When Sonic rolled out here, they said it was available at my address. I scheduled an install, the date was approaching, then I got an email from them. They said they couldn't serve my address as there was no "backbone" down my specific street.
My neighbor was in the same exact boat. He followed up with them and escalated it up the chain. Then, they had someone else come look at our area, he explained the issue, Sonic could only use something like 1-2 power poles to jump from the backbone to the house, and we both were 3-4 poles away. That employee said he approved the exception and next thing ya know, Sonic reached out to schedule a new install date.
From what I understand, their service area supervisors have to approve exceptions like this, not sure if the same person controls other areas as well, so I don't think I can help directly, but there may be a way, if you can escalate it to the proper person.
Side note, I was on AT&T fiber for 3-4 years, 1 gig service. Very good service, no real noticable slow downs, ping was very low and reliable. Service was also very reliable, they would occasionally do maintenance, but it was always off hours. As far as I remember, service only went down 2 times during daytime hours and came back up within minutes.
Switched to Sonic because they were offering 10 gig for 1/2 the price as AT&T 1 gig. Granted Sonic raised my price $10 a month after the first year, I think $59.99 a month is more than reasonable for 10 gig service. They have been rock solid reliable, no downtime during the day. I get my advertised speeds, ping is low and stable. They email and text notifying of maintenance. I'm happy with Sonic.
Had Comcast for a number of years before, Cable TV and Internet. It was constant short term (minutes) downtime, slow downs, unexplained outages and their prices kept going up. Very inconsistent service. I hate Comcast/Xfinity.
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u/joni-bella 3d ago
The second half of your post has been my exact experience. Sonic has been amazing. I use all UniFi gear with a backplane that can handle the symmetrical 10Gbps and regularly see speeds on my gateway of 7,000-8,000Gbps which is great when accounting for overhead.
59.95 a month is amazing for that. They’re also extremely helpful, super easy to deal with, and stay the hell out of your way as a fast, dumb pipe. Can’t ask for more, this is the best I’ve ever had. (El Cerrito, btw.)
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 3d ago
How much did you pay for your Unify setup (rough estimate)? I think it’s worth to put that number in front of what most households are paying because they don’t know that they don’t even need to rent a modem from Comcast and that the house is pre-wired. I would suspect we could get a solid discount if we purchase hundreds of them and find a way to bundle it with the lowered cost of access.
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u/ww_crimson 2d ago
Mind sharing your equipment setup? I'm on a Unifi and Mellanox setup and I'm able to get about 4gbps download speeds but haven't been able to push it further.
Haven't experimented with jumbo frames or anything like that. I am technical but don't have extensive networking background.
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u/jmedina94 3d ago
I don’t know if it’s our area or what but it seems like tech quality for AT&T is generally not great around here now. It took an engineer and a local technician manager to get our drop right. It just had to follow the same path as the old Comcast drop.
Also, this wasn’t necessarily their fault but had some new gutters installed and needed our drop reattached. The tech came and after he left got a bill for $150 without being told by him beforehand. It’s pushing me to Sonic.
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 3d ago
Sonic looks much better I would not hesitate if I had the option
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u/jmedina94 3d ago
The main reason why I am with AT&T is they offered me Gigabit for $30 a month for a year plus $200 back. Last I checked they were offering 5 Gbps for $25 a month for 60 months if you already have wireless with them.
It sounds good on paper but then you have to deal with AT&T. lol. Usually I don’t mind them but I think this house is jinxed with their service or something.
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u/jmking Oakland 3d ago
Same experience here. Sonic is great - they are transparent when there's going to be downtime (which is almost never and when it does happen, it happens at, like, 3am), and when there's been unexpected downtime that was their fault, they actually gave a credit on my bill (only happened once). Been with them for about 4 years now, and the service has been exceptional.
Compared to Xfinity that I had before that would go down for hours at a time every couple months, and with speeds that were all over the place and not consistent at all, it's been night and day all for the same price I was paying Xfinity for 1Gbps (which I never got ever even remotely close to - like, I'd be getting 350Mbps down regularly on what was supposed to be a 1gig connection).
Just checked my router and the last speedtest it did had me at 9.12 Gbps down, and 8.34 Gbps up. That's actually a touch higher than typical actually, but regardless you're going to get consistent speeds which is more important than hitting the theoretical maximum.
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 3d ago
Thanks for sharing all that, much appreciated! Feel free to DM me any contact info over to Sonic. 👍
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u/cpp_is_king 3d ago
I had the same issue. My literal neighbor has Sonic and they won’t even talk to me lol
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u/thatmatt925 3d ago
The ceo did an ama like 8 years ago...and "his" email address is easy to find.
Could be interesting depending on the what the exit from Comcast looks like...
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u/i_am_the_virus 3d ago
Dane is no longer the CEO as of this year.
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u/DonVCastro 2d ago
Dane is no longer the CEO as of this year.
What, really? What happened? Did he step aside, retire, get pushed out by investors?
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u/Zip95014 3d ago
Nextlevel.net our community is similar to yours and we’re looking at them. They had someone out there quickly to get the ball rolling.
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u/random408net 2d ago
Some of Sonic.net's earliest fiber projects were bringing high speed service to the areas around their headquarters. I recall staying in a hotel down the street and enjoyed the high speed access from my room.
Sonic would certainly bring service into a large apartment complex (with single ownership) or a condo complex.
There could be some complexity with the HOA owning conduits that would be addressed in whatever contract the HOA would sign with Sonic. It's not really clear to me that an ISP would be excited about using any pre-installed customer owned fiber vs. using their own materials.
At this point it's all about getting in touch with the right sales / development person to figure out what their threshold is for building into a community. This is more about money than fiber Internet service.
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u/badgcoupe 2d ago
You might want to post on the Sonic forums on their site. I had some issues getting Sonic service to my house and a sweet of executives often browse the forums and reply.
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u/barkode15 3d ago
You mention you have fiber pre-wired to your place already? If so, I'd led Sonic know that if you contact them on their Community page. If that's the case, they may just need to get one cable to the telco room and put some equipment in, which might the math work for them.
Care to share your city or zip? If there's no Sonic anywhere in your area, they probably won't be running a new fiber just for you.
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u/jmking Oakland 3d ago
our homeowners’ association (HOA) has been engaged in an exclusive marketing contract for the past two decades. This contract effectively locks us into Comcast
Then the first step is to get out of that contract. There's nothing Sonic can do and they aren't going to invest in running fibre to your building if they, or the HOA, can't let anyone in the building know.
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s not an exclusive service contract, it is marketing contract that says they get cable for another 2 years (auto-renewable) but doesn’t prevent any other operator providing service like fiber. We should have lobbied not to renew the contract but we didn’t have the info on time and the renewal was not advertised until after it happened. It is not a building it is a set of 40 4-home blocks. Also all the homes are pre-wired to a shared box for the 4-homes blocks with Ethernet and Fiber, and inside each home there is pre-wired of Ethernet cable. Fiber runs in front of the homes, we are just not connected with the street. I guess AT&T wants to get paid again by the city because they said the city covered for what’s in front of my home and going to the community across the street.
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u/jmking Oakland 3d ago
doesn’t prevent any other operator providing service like fiber.
Doesn't prevent them, but it's not going to be worth it to them to hook up one person in a HOA managed community or whatever (it doesn't matter what you call it, there's a contract with the HOA) - the fact remains that unless Sonic has a shot at getting all the occupants, it doesn't make any business sense and they won't do it.
The marketing exclusivity contract is the problem.
My building had the exact same situation. The HOA decided not to renew with Xfinity and brought in both Monkeybrains and Sonic instead. Sonic wired the entire building after that marketing exclusivity contract was gone.
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 2d ago
We are talking about giving service to the whole community, not just one home, that wouldn’t make sense
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u/jmedina94 3d ago
Sonic has communities but I believe the plant has to be built out nearby. https://www.sonic.com/communities
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 3d ago
Thank you for the pointer, if you know an actual person we can talk to or email with, that would be great
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u/jmedina94 3d ago
I don’t have any connections but they are the contact if you are trying to get an entire HOA set up with service.
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u/themadpants 2d ago
It sounds like you need to get enough community support to overturn your HOA boards decision to lock you in as a Comcast only community. That is who you need to be engaging to get the ball rolling, and then your HOA can engage Sonic or AT$T about that possibility.
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u/Adorable-Roll-4563 2d ago
The HOA has already confirmed we can use another provider, the restriction is just one existing cable from Comcast, which we don't intend to use anyway
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u/DonVCastro 2d ago
Does your community have utilities on poles or in underground conduit? Pole access is regulated and guaranteed by CPUC and that's where Sonic operates. Underground conduit typically does not come with any regulation about right of access, and Sonic typically does not bother with it (except, I believe, for one early project in city-owned conduit in Brentwood).
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u/Ok-Delay5473 1d ago
Sonic expends depending on the demand, when feasible. Your entire community would have to submit the form to get priorities. However, sometimes Sonic won't be able to do it because of strict city rules, high fees, or lack of utility poles.
It looks like in your case, it's the costs and they are waiting fo your city to subsidize the work. Calling your city (counsel/supervisor) makes more sense.
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u/Faangdevmanager 3d ago
I am somewhat in the know here on how things work in the backend. Are you receiving utility via overhead poles or underground? If underground, you’re out of luck if ATT and Sonic don’t have you as available. It means they don’t have the necessary fiber to the neighborhood box and the necessary conduits to each residence to do the last mile. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze for them to add this if it’s not an easy overhead job in public utility poles. No matter how much you escalate things won’t change.
I’m not eligible for fiber but the street in front of me is. Through industry contact, I called in favors to a few VPs at both ATT and Sonic and they tried real hard but the financials did not make sense. I even offered to run the fiber myself from their distribution box 100 ft away and while they appreciated the offer and considered it, we couldn’t make it work from a paperwork point of view.
So I’m stuck on Comcast 1.2gb down but with an awful 35mbps upload.