San Francisco is a strange business internet market. Comcast and AT&T cover most of the city, but Sonic, Monkeybrains, Wiline, and a long list of small fiber operators compete for share in dense commercial districts. The result is that the right rate exists, but the carrier with the right rate is rarely the one you are with.
The pricing problem in San Francisco is the assumption that the local fiber overbuilder is too small to take seriously. They are often the cheapest option in the city.
San Francisco's commercial east side
San Francisco's commercial demand sits in three places. Downtown and the Financial District hold the legal, banking, and corporate corridor that anchors the city's traditional office tower stock and the bulk of its daytime workforce. SoMa, the south-of-Market district that filled in with technology, conventions, and creative-office tenancy over the past two decades, holds the Moscone Center and a deep concentration of tech-firm tenancy. Mission Bay, the redeveloped life-sciences district on the city's eastern shore, anchors a growing concentration of academic-medical, biotech, and Class A office tenancy. Salesforce, which locates its global headquarters at Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and UCSF, which operates a major teaching, research, and clinical campus in Mission Bay, are two of the largest commercial accounts in the metro and drive heavy enterprise telecom demand.
In January 2024, Bandwidth IG announced a Bay Area dark-fiber expansion that ties into downtown San Francisco to create a new high-capacity fiber ring, adding wholesale fiber capacity that filters into commercial pricing across the city. One pricing wrinkle: San Francisco's Fiber to Housing program is set to connect 30,000 affordable-housing units with free high-speed internet by July 2025, an unusually visible city-backed affordability intervention that has reset the tenant baseline in covered buildings.
What you should be paying
These are dedicated internet ranges from current carrier wholesale data, marked up to typical retail.
San Francisco dedicated internet, typical retail (mid 50%)
Monthly recurring charge, dedicated internet access (DIA). Numbers are derived from current carrier wholesale quotes.
| Speed | Typical retail (mid 50%) | Sample size |
|---|---|---|
| 100 Mbps | $660 – $800/mo | n = 1 |
| 500 Mbps | $955 – $1,160/mo | n = 1 |
| 10 Gbps | $1,330 – $2,660/mo | n = 2 |
If your bill sits above the high end of the band, you are likely overpaying.
Analyze My Bill FreeFor AT&T Business Fiber at 1 Gbps, expect $180 to $260 a month for a single office. For Comcast coax at 600 Mbps, the fair price is $150 to $230 a month.
For Sonic fiber, the price-to-speed ratio is among the best in the country. A 1 Gbps line in their footprint is often $40 to $80 a month at the published consumer rate, with business plans starting around $100 a month.
Carriers worth quoting in San Francisco
Six carriers cover most addresses in the city.
- AT&T Business Fiber. Strong commercial fiber footprint, especially SOMA and the Financial District.
- Comcast Business. Coax everywhere, fiber in select buildings.
- Sonic. Independent fiber operator. Aggressive pricing in the Sunset, Richmond, and parts of the East Bay.
- Monkeybrains. Fixed wireless, strong in dense commercial districts.
- Wiline. Fixed wireless and fiber, mid-market focus.
- T-Mobile Business Internet. $85 a month for 200 to 300 Mbps. Useful benchmark.
If you have not had three of these on a quote sheet, you have not run a real comparison.
What to do this week
- Pull your most recent invoice. Find the contract end date and the side fees.
- Get one quote from a local fiber operator like Sonic. The published rate is often the floor on what AT&T or Comcast will match.
- Compare your base rate to the bands above. If you are 20 percent above the high end, the retention call is worth making.
See where your San Francisco bill sits against current rates
Upload your latest business internet invoice. We will run it against San Francisco carrier wholesale data and flag the side fees that should not be there.
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