6 ms·

Show HN: Using city permits to map Sonic.net fiber

103 points by ThatDan 9y ago

firloop 9y ago
Link to the map itself: https://thatdan.github.io/sonic_fiber/ https://thatdan.github.io/sonic_fiber/
- godot 9y ago
  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.
  - firloop 9y ago
    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 https://www.sonic.com/get-involved-brentwood-fiber
    - seanmccann 9y ago
      San Francisco's population density, willingness to pay for faster internet, and displeasure with Comcast will hopefully mean more success than Brentwood.
  - ThatDan 9y ago
    Thanks! Data is specific based on the city's permits. If Brentwood has a site similar to http://bsm.sfdpw.org/ http://bsm.sfdpw.org/ for pulling permits that would be a start. You can always check your address at https://www.sonic.com/availability https://www.sonic.com/availability too.
- kingbirdy 9y ago
  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
  - ThatDan 9y ago
    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.
    - ThatDan 9y ago
      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.
- m-j-fox 9y ago
  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.
  - convolvatron 9y ago
    i (think?) it might be related to the areas where services are still run by pole
  - bguillet 9y ago
    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.
    - ThatDan 9y ago
      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/ 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)
avh02 9y ago
not worth a PR (cos it's opinion and a specific application), but if you have aria2c on your machine you can do something like: aria2c -i permiturls.txt to download file lists.
- mynewtb 9y ago
  wget supports the same :)
  - avh02 9y ago
    ah, I had a feeling one of the more common methods did... i even checked the curl man page but not wget's :(
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  You could also xargs -n 1 curl -O <permiturls.txt. No need for special tools :)
derekdahmer 9y ago
Wow I'm 1/2 block away from a fiber line. How do I convince Sonic to do my street?
- ThatDan 9y ago
  There are examples of complaints about this on Sonic's forums[0] If you're not parallel to a line you might be out of luck. [0] https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=1310 https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=131...
- pfooti 9y ago
  yeah, a lot of the problems with the fiber rollout (I am not affiliated with Sonic, but I'm in their fiber zone and read a lot of their statements about fiber as they were starting up) is that you're limited by overhead wires, ground-level distribution boxes, and a number of other things that make infrastructure hard to build, somewhat understandably. Like, I happen to be lucky as the road I'm on is parallel to and one block east of a road with no fiber. I believe the initial rollout was also a function of current subscriber density, like if they could count on converting N customers per street, it was a more compelling argument.
- jefurii 9y ago
  If you have line-of-sight to a utility pole, would it be possible for them to mount some gear on it and give you point-to-point wifi?
unruthless 9y ago
Awesome. One of those blue lines is close by, so I looked up my address in Sonic's availability tool[1], and sure enough: "Gigabit Fiber is coming to your location Service is scheduled to be available Dec 2017" [1] https://www.sonic.com/availability https://www.sonic.com/availability
- ThatDan 9y ago
  Glad it worked! I was spot-checking various addresses but Sonic's captcha makes it painful. Interestingly there seems to be no correlation to when a permit was pulled vs when service is actually available. There are addresses covered by permits from last year that aren't serviceable until 2018!
  - samstave 9y ago
    Budgeting? Staffing skills? Cautious entry? Revenue ROI projection validation? Could be a range of factors.... Having the permit doesnt mean the fiber is pulled. Fiber puller could be a third party installer and the negotiate contract cost/schedule/other legal-BS --- I recall seeing some guys in 2012 up near 21st and Market, above castro - noe valley border, installing fiber. I stopped and asked them who tey were pulling the fiber for and the said "google" -- although google still doesnt have any residential fiber in that area that I know of... I could only think it was more for a "googler" as opposed to "google" or a "google user" -- or the guy was BSing... -- Anyway, permit doent mean the lines are slpliced/polished/terminated and that they have equipment to light them up yet. Heck - they may have access to conduit etc... but they may not have equipment space negotiations with some telco who has a CO in the area. and you know how much fun telco-to-telco contracting agreements are....
    - ThatDan 9y ago
      Very very true. I should clarify that the map is speculative at best.
- axoltl 9y ago
  I'm half a block away from one of the blue lines, unfortunately the tool's only presenting me with DSL... I love Sonic, but I used to have their DSL service and it wasn't great. Not Sonic's fault, but San Francisco's copper is pretty horrible. These days I have a Comcast business account, but I'd take any chance to switch back to Sonic.
ThatDan 9y ago
Happy to see this hit the front page. I wanted to share this with the users at https://forums.sonic.net https://forums.sonic.net who have been pining for maps but you need a Sonic.net account to post. If anyone is willing to share, I'd appreciate it.
- cybersol 9y ago
  I posted it to the Access forum there. Thanks for the map, it is now clear to me that they will not get to many of the hills of the city for quite some time.
omgduh 9y ago
Neat stuff! I'm pretty sure I saw them out there today stringing some up on my street, and it's reflected on the map.
hackunomatter 9y ago
2 blocks from where I live... dammit! So close, and yet so far...
mrhwick 9y ago
http://projects.timesfreepress.com/2014/05/epb/gig/gig.html http://projects.timesfreepress.com/2014/05/epb/gig/gig.html
TobbenTM 9y ago
Not an American, so could someone tldr me what makes Sonic.net interesting? Just better than Comcast/VZ/etc?
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  One of the first to deploy residential and small business gigabit Internet connectivity at affordable prices. Strong respect for customer privacy. They back their words up with actions. Basically, an ethical, value-to-the-customer organization and business model. (As of a couple of years ago; I'm out of touch.) I'll add, also a local/regional player. Good for competition. P.S. In the U.S., having such a choice in terms of a provider and value for service, is actually rather unusual. People who don't have something like Sonic in their area (me, for one) and who know anything about ISP's and what they provide, look on longingly. Google's Fiber offer almost made it to my area. Sigh... so close, and yet so far.
- wpietri 9y ago
  Worlds better. Not an exploitative wannabe-monopoly. Their service is way more reliable. And if something goes wrong, when you call tech support you get a smart person who knows things and has power to fix problems.
- corysama 9y ago
  Sonic.net customer here. Why I give them my money: 1) https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ The company is politically outspoken and well aligned with the interests of its customers. 2) Their customer service is actually knowledgeable, empowered and downright pleasant to engage with. The only frustration I've had is whenever they've had to delegate work to AT&T.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
    I'll also note that, though the DSL service is obviously not very fast, it has had excellent uptime and consistency for me. I'm consistently able to stream HD video (1080p 30fps, 900p 60fps) without interruption. Contrast this to local cable where many people complain about poor streaming performance around peak times, despite much 'faster' service. As much as 12-14Mbps is limiting, you genuinely get that performance nearly always.
HaloZero 9y ago
I was debating about getting it and curious if it really makes that world a difference? Does a gigbit connection make the internet substantially better? It's almost double the cost of MonkeyBrains another provider that has a strong net neutrality position, custom service, and etc.
- wpietri 9y ago
  My friends with MonkeyBrains grumble about variable bandwidth availability and poor customer service. Sonic has been rock solid for me on both accounts. Personally, I expect the gigabit connection to make a pretty modest difference for me vs my current ADSL. The main problem it'll solve for me is backups, which take too long to run. It'll also make it much easier to stream audio and video from my home server to other spots when I'm traveling.
  - HaloZero 9y ago
    I will admit, variable bandwidth availability has been painful sometimes. Sometimes I just want to watch a movie and it's like crawl. Not sure if that's worth an extra $500/year though for gigabit.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      If I'm reading things rightly, it's about $700/year for gigabit. [1] I'm paying something like the same for Sonic's ADSL, so it's a no-brainer for me. [1] http://hoodline.com/2017/05/sonic-now-offering-gigabit-fiber-internet-in-new-san-francisco-neighborhoods http://hoodline.com/2017/05/sonic-now-offering-gigabit-fiber...
      - inferiorhuman 9y ago
        Yes, Sonic's DSL offerings are quite expensive.
- pfooti 9y ago
  I went from ADSL to fiber (both provided by sonic). It is really quite something. The speed is rad (I can't compare it to something like, say 500 mbit, but compared to DSL it's amazing) - I can download a whole steam game or a stupid xcode multi-gigabyte update in a couple of minutes. The latency is also really, really good - my ping times went way down also. Another thing to think about is that although the upload speed is asymmetric (only 100 Mbit up), it is quite speedy enough for me to run my plex server in a mode that lets me watch my content from wherever. In any case, I work remote and do a lot of video conferences (hangouts mostly, some skype), and the transition from ADSL to gigabit fiber was huge there, and is definitely the biggest benefit I've seen. My videoconferencing is now pretty solid. Any dropouts or hangups are the fault of the other end of the connection (as far as they can be attributed at least), whereas on DSL I'd get a lot more dropouts.
throwaway91111 9y ago
Looks like it's just san francisco? Might want to alter the title.
megakwood 9y ago
Very cool... The map comes pretty close to my house so I put in my address and they allowed me to preorder for October. Thanks!
fludlight 9y ago
Why doesn't Sonic have a map like this on their webpage? They could even add a second color for "coming soon" streets.
kevinburke 9y ago
If you want this in your Bay Area town/region you should write your city council. There are a lot of older neighbors who oppose new poles / new right of ways so it's good for the City Council to hear voices that support fiber.

103 points by ThatDan 9y ago

firloop 9y ago

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

godot 9y ago
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.
- firloop 9y ago
  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 https://www.sonic.com/get-involved-brentwood-fiber
  - seanmccann 9y ago
    San Francisco's population density, willingness to pay for faster internet, and displeasure with Comcast will hopefully mean more success than Brentwood.
- ThatDan 9y ago
  Thanks! Data is specific based on the city's permits. If Brentwood has a site similar to http://bsm.sfdpw.org/ http://bsm.sfdpw.org/ for pulling permits that would be a start. You can always check your address at https://www.sonic.com/availability https://www.sonic.com/availability too.
kingbirdy 9y ago
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
- ThatDan 9y ago
  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.
  - ThatDan 9y ago
    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.
m-j-fox 9y ago
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.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  i (think?) it might be related to the areas where services are still run by pole
- bguillet 9y ago
  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.
  - ThatDan 9y ago
    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/ 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)

avh02 9y ago

not worth a PR (cos it's opinion and a specific application), but if you have aria2c on your machine you can do something like: aria2c -i permiturls.txt to download file lists.

mynewtb 9y ago
wget supports the same :)
- avh02 9y ago
  ah, I had a feeling one of the more common methods did... i even checked the curl man page but not wget's :(
throwaway91111 9y ago
You could also xargs -n 1 curl -O <permiturls.txt. No need for special tools :)

derekdahmer 9y ago

Wow I'm 1/2 block away from a fiber line. How do I convince Sonic to do my street?

ThatDan 9y ago
There are examples of complaints about this on Sonic's forums[0] If you're not parallel to a line you might be out of luck. [0] https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=1310 https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&start=131...
pfooti 9y ago
yeah, a lot of the problems with the fiber rollout (I am not affiliated with Sonic, but I'm in their fiber zone and read a lot of their statements about fiber as they were starting up) is that you're limited by overhead wires, ground-level distribution boxes, and a number of other things that make infrastructure hard to build, somewhat understandably. Like, I happen to be lucky as the road I'm on is parallel to and one block east of a road with no fiber. I believe the initial rollout was also a function of current subscriber density, like if they could count on converting N customers per street, it was a more compelling argument.
jefurii 9y ago
If you have line-of-sight to a utility pole, would it be possible for them to mount some gear on it and give you point-to-point wifi?

unruthless 9y ago

Awesome. One of those blue lines is close by, so I looked up my address in Sonic's availability tool[1], and sure enough: "Gigabit Fiber is coming to your location Service is scheduled to be available Dec 2017" [1] https://www.sonic.com/availability https://www.sonic.com/availability

ThatDan 9y ago
Glad it worked! I was spot-checking various addresses but Sonic's captcha makes it painful. Interestingly there seems to be no correlation to when a permit was pulled vs when service is actually available. There are addresses covered by permits from last year that aren't serviceable until 2018!
- samstave 9y ago
  Budgeting? Staffing skills? Cautious entry? Revenue ROI projection validation? Could be a range of factors.... Having the permit doesnt mean the fiber is pulled. Fiber puller could be a third party installer and the negotiate contract cost/schedule/other legal-BS --- I recall seeing some guys in 2012 up near 21st and Market, above castro - noe valley border, installing fiber. I stopped and asked them who tey were pulling the fiber for and the said "google" -- although google still doesnt have any residential fiber in that area that I know of... I could only think it was more for a "googler" as opposed to "google" or a "google user" -- or the guy was BSing... -- Anyway, permit doent mean the lines are slpliced/polished/terminated and that they have equipment to light them up yet. Heck - they may have access to conduit etc... but they may not have equipment space negotiations with some telco who has a CO in the area. and you know how much fun telco-to-telco contracting agreements are....
  - ThatDan 9y ago
    Very very true. I should clarify that the map is speculative at best.
axoltl 9y ago
I'm half a block away from one of the blue lines, unfortunately the tool's only presenting me with DSL... I love Sonic, but I used to have their DSL service and it wasn't great. Not Sonic's fault, but San Francisco's copper is pretty horrible. These days I have a Comcast business account, but I'd take any chance to switch back to Sonic.

ThatDan 9y ago

Happy to see this hit the front page. I wanted to share this with the users at https://forums.sonic.net https://forums.sonic.net who have been pining for maps but you need a Sonic.net account to post. If anyone is willing to share, I'd appreciate it.

cybersol 9y ago
I posted it to the Access forum there. Thanks for the map, it is now clear to me that they will not get to many of the hills of the city for quite some time.

omgduh 9y ago

Neat stuff! I'm pretty sure I saw them out there today stringing some up on my street, and it's reflected on the map.

hackunomatter 9y ago

2 blocks from where I live... dammit! So close, and yet so far...

mrhwick 9y ago

http://projects.timesfreepress.com/2014/05/epb/gig/gig.html http://projects.timesfreepress.com/2014/05/epb/gig/gig.html

TobbenTM 9y ago

Not an American, so could someone tldr me what makes Sonic.net interesting? Just better than Comcast/VZ/etc?

pasbesoin 9y ago
One of the first to deploy residential and small business gigabit Internet connectivity at affordable prices. Strong respect for customer privacy. They back their words up with actions. Basically, an ethical, value-to-the-customer organization and business model. (As of a couple of years ago; I'm out of touch.) I'll add, also a local/regional player. Good for competition. P.S. In the U.S., having such a choice in terms of a provider and value for service, is actually rather unusual. People who don't have something like Sonic in their area (me, for one) and who know anything about ISP's and what they provide, look on longingly. Google's Fiber offer almost made it to my area. Sigh... so close, and yet so far.
wpietri 9y ago
Worlds better. Not an exploitative wannabe-monopoly. Their service is way more reliable. And if something goes wrong, when you call tech support you get a smart person who knows things and has power to fix problems.
corysama 9y ago
Sonic.net customer here. Why I give them my money: 1) https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/ The company is politically outspoken and well aligned with the interests of its customers. 2) Their customer service is actually knowledgeable, empowered and downright pleasant to engage with. The only frustration I've had is whenever they've had to delegate work to AT&T.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
  I'll also note that, though the DSL service is obviously not very fast, it has had excellent uptime and consistency for me. I'm consistently able to stream HD video (1080p 30fps, 900p 60fps) without interruption. Contrast this to local cable where many people complain about poor streaming performance around peak times, despite much 'faster' service. As much as 12-14Mbps is limiting, you genuinely get that performance nearly always.

HaloZero 9y ago

I was debating about getting it and curious if it really makes that world a difference? Does a gigbit connection make the internet substantially better? It's almost double the cost of MonkeyBrains another provider that has a strong net neutrality position, custom service, and etc.

wpietri 9y ago
My friends with MonkeyBrains grumble about variable bandwidth availability and poor customer service. Sonic has been rock solid for me on both accounts. Personally, I expect the gigabit connection to make a pretty modest difference for me vs my current ADSL. The main problem it'll solve for me is backups, which take too long to run. It'll also make it much easier to stream audio and video from my home server to other spots when I'm traveling.
- HaloZero 9y ago
  I will admit, variable bandwidth availability has been painful sometimes. Sometimes I just want to watch a movie and it's like crawl. Not sure if that's worth an extra $500/year though for gigabit.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    If I'm reading things rightly, it's about $700/year for gigabit. [1] I'm paying something like the same for Sonic's ADSL, so it's a no-brainer for me. [1] http://hoodline.com/2017/05/sonic-now-offering-gigabit-fiber-internet-in-new-san-francisco-neighborhoods http://hoodline.com/2017/05/sonic-now-offering-gigabit-fiber...
    - inferiorhuman 9y ago
      Yes, Sonic's DSL offerings are quite expensive.
pfooti 9y ago
I went from ADSL to fiber (both provided by sonic). It is really quite something. The speed is rad (I can't compare it to something like, say 500 mbit, but compared to DSL it's amazing) - I can download a whole steam game or a stupid xcode multi-gigabyte update in a couple of minutes. The latency is also really, really good - my ping times went way down also. Another thing to think about is that although the upload speed is asymmetric (only 100 Mbit up), it is quite speedy enough for me to run my plex server in a mode that lets me watch my content from wherever. In any case, I work remote and do a lot of video conferences (hangouts mostly, some skype), and the transition from ADSL to gigabit fiber was huge there, and is definitely the biggest benefit I've seen. My videoconferencing is now pretty solid. Any dropouts or hangups are the fault of the other end of the connection (as far as they can be attributed at least), whereas on DSL I'd get a lot more dropouts.

throwaway91111 9y ago

Looks like it's just san francisco? Might want to alter the title.

megakwood 9y ago

Very cool... The map comes pretty close to my house so I put in my address and they allowed me to preorder for October. Thanks!

fludlight 9y ago

Why doesn't Sonic have a map like this on their webpage? They could even add a second color for "coming soon" streets.

kevinburke 9y ago

If you want this in your Bay Area town/region you should write your city council. There are a lot of older neighbors who oppose new poles / new right of ways so it's good for the City Council to hear voices that support fiber.