Fusion Broadband update
October 16, 2008 – 7:40 pm
Building to a gold star - CO build status
Today we delivered service for our first Fusion Broadband customer in Santa Rosa.
The first circuit was delivered for Bob Amen, a long time Sonic.net customer. Bob is also the director of systems and network admin at local publisher O’Reilly Media. Bob ordered our middle speed (10Mbps) dry loop (aka “Naked”) DSL for his home, and he’s got a solid connection at the full speed.
Our team is continuing to do the heavy lifting required to build out the network. I am pleased and inspired by the progress. We are all looking forward to continued expansion.
In addition to downtown Santa Rosa, we have completed equipment setup in Sebastopol, Berkeley, Rohnert Park and Windsor. We have put cabinets into Healdsburg, plus two offices in San Francisco, and will be bolting them down and installing equipment and power. Albany, Petaluma and other San Francisco offices are coming soon.
Progress is displayed on our beautiful tally board, pictured here. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We will keep you posted as we progress to the “Gold Star” for each CO, and meanwhile, you can order service here!
25 Responses to “Fusion Broadband update”
Hoping to be your first Berkeley customer!
By Graham Freeman on Oct 16, 2008
And your second Berkeley customer!
By Sam Leffler on Oct 17, 2008
and your first sf customer!
By chris haumesser on Oct 17, 2008
What about Sausalito?
By John Pettittt on Oct 17, 2008
John,
Currently we’re working on our initial list of 19 central offices. You can find the list and links to maps and other info in a comment I posted on this article.
After those are all up and running, and if adoption is strong, we’ll begin to schedule and build additional locations around the Bay Area.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Oct 17, 2008
Hey everyone chill
Sonic stands for “Sonoma interconnect”.
We get dibs in Sonoma county first! :p
WNDSCA11!!!
By xan on Oct 17, 2008
xan,
If you zoom in on the board, you can see that Windsor is coming along real well. We’re almost done there. Will you be the one who fills the “first customer” box?
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Oct 17, 2008
“Annex M – SNRSCA11″
– 2600 Feet !!
Two pairs of copper come down the hill to me from here, and I don’t use landline voice [DRY_LINE annex ?], so if you want some good “real location” upload speed numbrs to pitch around,,,,, I’m available
-NK
By N W Karels on Oct 18, 2008
Dane, Saw that!
My issue would be down time.
Anyway to keep my current DSL live until after fusion is installed and done training ect.? -Guessing no.
If not, is there a way to get the same static IP block I have now transferred to fusion?
By xan on Oct 18, 2008
There’s no downtime when you switch to standalone dry pair Fusion Broadband. It’s delivered today on a new pair – so your current AT&T line DSL will remain in service until you tell us to cancel it (after delivery of Fusion!)
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Oct 20, 2008
I have put in a request, so add me to the Berkeley upgrade list. Those of us with 384K (!)DSL should have priority.
By Yale on Oct 20, 2008
Oh my baby is so grown up now! SONIC used to be such a cute little thing (didn’t notice it at SRJC many years ago) and now it’s a telco!
LOL
I doubt Antioch (East Contra Costa County for you geographically challenged) is going to see any of those fancy things. 100K++ population isn’t much!
I just wanted to say I’m happy and yet worried. I smell a mega corporation down the road and wish I had stock in the company!
By Randolph Garrett on Oct 20, 2008
Can we get a live cam on that chart?
By Jon on Oct 23, 2008
Jon,
We came up with the exact same idea! I’ve talked to Nathan and Juston about it, and we’ve got an extra camera lying around too. No promises, but we hope to.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Oct 23, 2008
Glad to see progress on Fusion. I signed up to be notified when available in Rohnert Park.
But I need to know if I move to Petaluma next year and Fusion isn’t available there yet, I can downgrade without penalty.
Good luck on the roll out.
By Jeremy on Oct 24, 2008
Jeremy,
There is no term commit with the Fusion Broadband product.
By Dane Jasper on Oct 25, 2008
Well, I went for it and moved to Sonic Fusion.
According to the techs who came out, I’m the 5th person in the SR area to get Fusion.
Few comments:
1) The techs that came out were great.
2) Now that the service is installed, it works very nicely.. No complaints so far.
3) The Sonic ordering system (ordering via the web, or via phone) was simply just not ready when it went live.. Took be the better part of 2 weeks to actually get the service ordered.
Wouldn’t take Amex at all, nor any other CC I had (and nothing the matter with my cards mind you). Ordering service was also a bit short. Was told twice by sales rep that I would get a call back the next day due to the issues, but no call came. Even a call to say ‘It aint fixed yet’ is better than just not following through. I will say that once Sonic was aware of this, the rep named Kelly *was* very helpful and followed up on everything she could. Fortunately Sonic didn’t get a 3rd strike on that =)
4) Billing hasn’t caught up with Fusion yet either. Was charged for the old DSL circuit, and 2x fusion circuits. The order to disconnect the SBC DSL line (via sonic service though) wasn’t put thru automatically after Fusion was installed. It took a call to billing to figure out that it was still ‘live’ a week after Fusion was installed. This was only caught by me because my sonic billing cycle happened to occur shortly after the Fusion was installed.
5) Hardware docs. The docs that came with the new ‘modem’ were pretty sad. It would be nice to see some better documentation on Sonic’s end for using this in common configurations (i.e. using the device as a bridge, since many users will have thier own routers, etc). The router built into the device is a tad limited. While Sonic of course can’t provide help on every router out there, there really should be instructions on how to switch between bridging and routing with this hardware.
Still though, a satisfied customer.
By Greg on Oct 30, 2008
Sorry to see Forestville on the bottom of the list. West county is always overlooked when it comes to utility updates. Been a customer since West Coast Online back in the early 90’s. Ramp up Forestville for us loyal customers.
By Brian on Nov 6, 2008
Ya, I’m sad Forestville is last too, because I live there! But, it’s a smaller market, so it has to come behind places like Windsor, Petaluma, etc.
That said, the entire build is just a few months end to end, so being first or last on the list isn’t a huge difference.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Nov 6, 2008
This is very exciting. I’m glad to see that you’re covering Albany as well. I live in Berkeley but my line runs to the ALBYCA11 CO, and currently maxes out at 1.5mbit DSL.
By Forest on Dec 11, 2008
Forest, I called Sonic today to ask about ALBYCA11, and there’s still no ETA on when service will be available. I was hoping they’d be further along 2 months after the original post, but what can you do.
cheers,
jon
By Jon on Dec 16, 2008
I talked to our team and the fuse-up of Albany and Berkeley is scheduled for Wednesday. Assuming that goes smoothly, we should open for orders by Friday in that area.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Dec 16, 2008
Great news! Thanks for the update, Dane!
By Jon on Dec 16, 2008
Looking forward to service at my place in Berkeley and at my friends’ in Albany.
By Graham Freeman on Dec 23, 2008