

San Francisco needs connectivity. Can this man deliver it? - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/san-francisco-of-all-places-has-lousy-connectivity-this-man-wants-to-change-that-439ac981196f

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discardorama
The the glacial pace at which San Francisco bureaucracy operates, this isn't
going to go anywhere. Soviet-era style "5-year plans" are a good indication of
that. It took David Chiu a long time to get the "dig once and lay dark fiber"
thing going; but it's still not implemented yet.

Someone reached out to Ed Lee about fiber in the city. His response was "we're
getting wifi!".

Fiber in a dense city like SF is a no-brainer. Heck, it's the "capital" of
Silicon Valley! But unfortunately the city bureaucracy is incredibly
uninformed on tech issues.

Efforts like MonkeyBrains, Sonic, etc. are not the answer, I'm sorry to say.
You're just replacing one monopoly with another. Who controls the Sonic fiber?
Sonic does. So now I've replaced Comcast with Sonic; it's still the same
situation.

The solution, I feel, is to provide fiber as an infrastructure; and let
outfits like MonkeyBrains, Sonic, ATT, Comcast, etc. provide the connectivity
to the Internet and offer added services. So the City lays the fiber and
maintains it for a small fee; but to actually get on the Internet you need to
buy service from a provider.

------
Animats
Sonic.net is already doing it. Currently under construction, Sonic gigabit
service in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Next, Bernal Heights and
the Castro.

SF Beautiful is fighting the above-ground boxes required.[1]

[1] [http://sfbeautiful.org/portfolio/protest-
boxes/](http://sfbeautiful.org/portfolio/protest-boxes/)

~~~
rosser
San Francisco is seriously the NIMBY-est damned place I've ever been.

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tswartz
>$35-$50 for wired high-speed Internet access in San Francisco buys speeds
that are about a tenth of those available in Seoul and Tokyo for the same
price.

This.

I'm optimistic that SF leaders can put pressure on Comcast to improve speeds.
Or perhaps they need to give incentives to Google Fiber and others to come to
SF.

~~~
Animats
Google/Earthlink crashed and burned in SF in 2009.[1]

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-a-victim-of-
Ea...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-a-victim-of-EarthLink-
woes-with-2506944.php)

------
spiritplumber
San Francisco needs to keep its personality.

