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&T to abandon their failed FTTN strategy and start offering direct fiber service as well.
It's slowly coming. I'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&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.
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's taking much longer to build, even when theoretically profitable. Sonic doesn't have as much capital, and those with capital (e.g. AT&T) aren't very motivated to build new infrastructure, especially when they're already the incumbent. About two years ago I chatted with an AT&T linesman putting up fiber on the utility poles outside my house and he flat-out said he wouldn't be there if Sonic hadn't forced AT&T's hand.
EDIT: Sonic is further along than I thought: "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." https://www.sfweekly.com/news/can-san-francisco-finally-clos...
I have a friend in SF who has been given the runaround by Sonic. He believes that Sonic's ticketing system is somehow integrated with AT&T and that AT&T is closing his install ticket after they finish an install at a different residence.
The City of SF bid on the utility infrastructure in the city that was formerly owned by PG&E. Hopefully this will allow the city to streamline installation of pole-based fiber installs, but I'm not sure how much PG&E ownership was causing problems before the auction.
Sonic has resold AT&T DSL and, more recently, FTTN services for many years. I think they also recently began reselling AT&T's fiber service in places where Sonic can't build out their own network for technical or economic reasons. See https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6798 (User dane is the Sonic CEO and he's very active in the forums.) It's not Sonic Fiber if it's not $49.99 for 1Gbps. Their resold AT&T service has pricing closer to AT&Ts.
If that 1/3 figure includes resold AT&T service, that would definitely be less impressive.
I'm not too optimistic about any city-planned communications infrastructure. The "progressives" hold onto a pipe dream of a free, city-wide public network[1], and they seem to balk at partnering with private companies for this purpose. Fortunately the "progressives" usually fall [just] short of majority control of the city council, and haven't won the mayorship in over 20 years, but they still manage to throw monkey wrenches into sensible plans.
[1] There was (still is?) a master plan to bury fiber with the city's water & sewer network, but I think the city is half done with a city-wide, multi-billion dollar water & sewer refurbishment and replacement project without having buried any fiber at all. I'm sure most people in the city, including myself, would love to see a public fiber built-out, but it's just not financially viable. The city has too much on its plate, and the situation won't ever change. The self-styled "progressive" faction is all talk, and stonewall everything else with feigned outrage, much like national Republicans.
I wonder if a good rule would be if a new entrant offers FTTP to an area, an incumbent cant do the same for 15 years.
This way there is a huge incentive for startups as the incumbent cant just follow them and do them out of business while ignoring other areas. At the same time it puts pressure on the imcumbant to roll out FTTP to reduce startups doing roll-out.
Probably also consider something similar with pricing.
It's slowly coming. I'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&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.
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's taking much longer to build, even when theoretically profitable. Sonic doesn't have as much capital, and those with capital (e.g. AT&T) aren't very motivated to build new infrastructure, especially when they're already the incumbent. About two years ago I chatted with an AT&T linesman putting up fiber on the utility poles outside my house and he flat-out said he wouldn't be there if Sonic hadn't forced AT&T's hand.
EDIT: Sonic is further along than I thought: "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." https://www.sfweekly.com/news/can-san-francisco-finally-clos...