<story><title>Making aerial fiber deployment faster and more efficient</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/aerial-fiber-deployment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulgerhardt</author><text>This would be a game changer. I live in a connectivity desert (Bay Area, California).  Outside of downtown SF there are virtually no residential options for Fiber. My house is 100 yards from a fiber pump - the quote to run the line was $50,000 (the ISP would waive the first $30,000). When I complained to the tech, he said they only have 7 residential fiber customers in the bay area. If Facebook really can bring high speed Internet to California they could bring it anywhere!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wahern</author><text>Huge swathes of San Francisco have access to residential Fiber. Sonic started building it out several years ago in the western half of the city, beginning in the Sunset District, which forced AT&amp;amp;T to abandon their failed FTTN strategy and start offering direct fiber service as well.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s slowly coming. I&amp;#x27;ve enjoyed Sonic fiber in the residential Richmond District for 3 or so years already. Sonic is still building out fiber in other neighborhoods (e.g. Marina and Cow Hollow are now coming online, I think), as is AT&amp;amp;T, but there are still considerable gaps where utility poles are oversubscribed. A single unusable pole can prevent reaching several city blocks simply because the replacement cost is so high it makes those remaining blocks unviable economically. In other neighborhoods with buried utilities, the city refuses to provide any assistance: no micro-trenching permitted, and no leaning on existing license holders to lease any pre-existing underground infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;Even the least dense areas of San Francisco are more dense than elsewhere in the Bay Area. Sonic provides residential fiber in many Bay Area cities, but rollouts are far slower. Regulatory costs (including review time) and less favorable RoI (less density) means it&amp;#x27;s taking much longer to build, even when theoretically profitable. Sonic doesn&amp;#x27;t have as much capital, and those with capital (e.g. AT&amp;amp;T) aren&amp;#x27;t very motivated to build new infrastructure, especially when they&amp;#x27;re already the incumbent. About two years ago I chatted with an AT&amp;amp;T linesman putting up fiber on the utility poles outside my house and he flat-out said he wouldn&amp;#x27;t be there if Sonic hadn&amp;#x27;t forced AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#x27;s hand.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Sonic is further along than I thought: &amp;quot;Santa Rosa-based provider Sonic has deployed fiber to more than one-third of homes in San Francisco over the past five years, Sonic CEO and co-founder Dane Jasper tells SF Weekly.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sfweekly.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;can-san-francisco-finally-close-its-digital-divide&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sfweekly.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;can-san-francisco-finally-clos...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Making aerial fiber deployment faster and more efficient</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/aerial-fiber-deployment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulgerhardt</author><text>This would be a game changer. I live in a connectivity desert (Bay Area, California).  Outside of downtown SF there are virtually no residential options for Fiber. My house is 100 yards from a fiber pump - the quote to run the line was $50,000 (the ISP would waive the first $30,000). When I complained to the tech, he said they only have 7 residential fiber customers in the bay area. If Facebook really can bring high speed Internet to California they could bring it anywhere!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reid</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in San Jose and am very fortunate to have AT&amp;amp;T Fiber aerials constructed in my backyard a few months after I moved here from Santa Clara. (I feel your pain.) AT&amp;amp;T now has quite a few customers in my neighborhood because they are faster and cheaper than Xfinity.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I believe this install was one of the last under the DIRECTV merger deal which required AT&amp;amp;T to deploy residential fiber.&lt;p&gt;The spools and amount of manual work to install the fiber lines was really something to see over the course of 3 months and I can really see the value of an automated robotic fiber deployment. The legacy cables are really huge.</text></comment>