San Francisco is one of the few US metros where a small local fiber operator can actually beat a national carrier on price for the same building. Sonic, Monkeybrains, Wiline, and a handful of others have real fiber and rooftop wireless across the dense commercial core, and they price aggressively because they have to. Building access is the swing variable. If your building is already on-net with two or three providers, you have real negotiating room. If it is not, the install economics flip and the incumbent quote wins by default. The carrier you should be on is rarely the carrier you are on.
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
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Related reading
Carriers worth a quote here
- Comcast Business
Comcast covers most commercial buildings in SF outside the dense FiDi towers, especially in SoMa, Mission, and the western neighborhoods. They are process-heavy and rarely the cheapest option, but their coax footprint is hard to avoid for sub-Gig broadband.
- AT&T Business
AT&T's fiber is strongest downtown and in the Financial District, with selective build-out into SoMa and Mission Bay. They lean on rate card pricing for SMBs but will discount meaningfully at quarter-end when a regional fiber competitor is in the deal.
- Astound Business
Astound (formerly Wave/RCN) has a real commercial footprint in SF and tends to come in below Comcast on coax broadband. They are more willing to negotiate on equipment fees and term length than the national cable operators.
- Lumen Business
Lumen is on-net in most Class A towers downtown and in SoMa, and they are unusually negotiable right now. For DIA and waves in the FiDi, they will often match or beat AT&T if you push hard at end of quarter.
- Verizon Business
Verizon is not an ILEC here, so their footprint is selective. They show up in enterprise deals downtown and in Mission Bay where the customer is already a national Verizon account, but they rarely win on price for a single SF site.
- Crown Castle Fiber
Crown Castle has dense fiber across downtown and SoMa from legacy Sunesys and Wilcon builds. They sell mostly wholesale and to large enterprise, but on-net buildings get competitive wave and dark fiber pricing.
What internet costs in San Francisco, California right now
San Francisco, California market notes
Common questions about business internet in San Francisco, California
Is Sonic actually a serious option for a San Francisco business?
Yes. Sonic has real fiber in many SF commercial buildings and prices well below AT&T and Comcast on equivalent speeds. The catch is building access. If Sonic is already on-net in your building, get a quote. If not, the install timeline and cost usually kill the deal. Always ask for an on-net check before assuming.
Why is my DIA quote so much higher than the published range?
Almost always because your building is off-net for that carrier. Construction NRCs and amortized build costs get rolled into the MRC, which can push a $1,200 quote to $2,500 or more. Get quotes from two or three carriers that are already on-net in your building before accepting an off-net price.
Should I use fixed wireless from Monkeybrains or Wiline as a primary circuit?
For most businesses, no. Use it as a secondary or backup circuit alongside fiber. Fixed wireless in SF is fast and cheap, but rooftop line-of-sight and weather create variability that matters for VoIP and video. For redundancy behind an SD-WAN, it is one of the best deals in the city.
How do I verify real diversity between two SF circuits?
Ask each carrier for the building entry point, the conduit path, and the meet-me room location. In SF towers, two carriers often share the same riser or the same street-side vault. Real diversity means different building entries, different conduits under the street, and different upstream paths. Get it in writing before you sign.
Is end-of-quarter pricing really better in San Francisco?
Yes, more so here than in most metros because Lumen, AT&T, and the regional fiber operators are all chasing the same downtown accounts. If you can time your renewal or new install to close in the last two weeks of a quarter, you will typically see 10 to 20 percent better pricing than mid-quarter quotes.
What is the most common overpayment pattern in SF?
Evergreen contracts on AT&T or Comcast circuits signed five or more years ago. Bandwidth pricing has dropped significantly since then, but auto-renewal keeps customers locked in at old rates. If you have not renegotiated since 2021, you are almost certainly paying 20 to 40 percent above current market for the same circuit.