Sonic Bringing 1 Gbps Fiber to San Francisco

"Sonic.net has announced that the company is bringing 1 Gbps fiber to the home service to San Francisco. According to the company, the initial deployment will cover an initial pilot region of two thousand homes in the Sunset District, after deployment begins in 2012. After that, the company says the buildout will take five years to cover "most" San Francisco homes -- assuming the company can get all necessary permits.

"Sonic knows a little something about offering 1 Gbps connectivity, having been Google's test partner in a deployment in Stanford that offered locals 1 Gbps connectivity for free (for the first year).

"San Francisco is our fastest-growing market for copper delivered Fusion Broadband+Phone service today, so we are very excited to bring our Fiber-optic upgrade process to the city," insists Sonic CEO Dane Jasper. "There is a huge demand in San Francisco for higher bandwidth services, and fiber is the only long-term way to meet this demand."

"You might recall that AT&T has struggled with their efforts to build cabinets around San Francisco, with opponents taking issue with the cabinets' impact on property values and overall city aesthetics. AT&T had stated they'd need to install 725 six-foot-tall utility cabinets to cover just a portion of the city with fiber to the node. Sonic says their full fiber deployment will use a more modest 188 outdoor utility cabinets to feed the city.

"Sonic, one of the only residential ISPs to not only survive the U.S. CLECpocalypse but go on to build their own network, also already offers fiber services in Sebastopol, California. Customers there can choose service with one or two included phone lines, plus ultra high-speed broadband at 100Mbps for $40 or 1Gbps (1000Mbps) for $70. These offers don't have bandwidth caps, and given the CEO's public opposition to caps, it seems likely their San Francisco services will be uncapped as well."

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