Quick Take
Some $45 million in state funding will help with infrastructure upgrades in the Santa Cruz Mountains, South County and elsewhere as California aims to get 98% of households broadband internet access by 2032.
Thousands of residents of rural Santa Cruz County are closer to having high-speed broadband access thanks to $45 million in new state funding to fuel three local projects.
The projects will bring new high-speed internet access to households in underserved areas around the Central Coast, with much-needed infrastructure upgrades that will also improve access for thousands of others within the next two years. It’s all part of the state’s ambitious goal of getting broadband access to 98% of state households by 2032.
California lawmakers have made improving internet infrastructure a core initiative, and in 2021, state officials approved legislation to allocate $6 billion to bring equitable, affordable high-speed broadband service to all Californians by building one of the largest high-speed broadband internet projects in the nation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the shift to remote school and work, shone a spotlight on inequality in access and underscored that broadband has become a required utility today.
The Federal Communications Commission defines broadband internet as a minimum of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) for downloads and 20 Mbps upload speeds; that’s the basic speed needed for things like streaming, online gaming, web browsing and downloading music. Almost 28% of Americans in rural areas don’t have even this much wired internet available to them, according to the FCC. Locally, nearly 5% of Santa Cruz County’s 80,061 addresses are underserved at less than this standard, according to a report released earlier this year.
The California Public Utilities Commission, through its California Advanced Services Fund, has allotted funding to three separate projects on the Central Coast.
Surfnet Communications will get $10.8 million for its Three County Fiber Project that will extend high-speed, fiber broadband services to rural communities in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Luis Obispo counties. That includes an estimated 500 homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains, according to Ken Nye, the company’s chief operations officer. The project will deliver significantly increased download and upload speeds in largely rural areas, replacing current inadequate speeds with a minimum proposed speed of 100/100 Mbps, Nye said.
Running fiber-optic cables is an expensive undertaking anywhere, but especially in remote areas like the Santa Cruz Mountains, said Nye. The project, expected to take about 18 months, will kick off next month, with delivery to the first customers anticipated to begin by the end of the year.
CPUC also awarded $29.48 million to LCB Communications LLC for its project to deploy a hybrid broadband network in the Aromas-San Juan area, which will bring service to 1,101 unserved locations in Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties.
Earlier this year, state officials also awarded $5.65 million to Santa Cruz-headquartered Cruzio for its Equal Access Summits to the Sea Project, which will expand middle-mile broadband infrastructure to 759 unserved locations in Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, specifically in rural areas at higher risk of natural disasters. About a third of those are in Santa Cruz County, and the upgraded infrastructure will bring improved access for even more residents, said Cruzio’s chief operating officer, James Hackett.
Middle-mile is the physical infrastructure needed to enable internet connectivity for homes and businesses, and it comprises high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances between local networks and global internet networks. Cruzio’s middle-mile infrastructure is “open access,” which means other internet service providers (ISPs) will also be able to use it to offer speedier, more reliable services to their customers. The project is expected to be completed by October 2025.
“Our region has a problem. We’ve got rural communities, farmers, low-income communities, then just a hop away, we’ve got Silicon Valley, high tech and bustling,” Hackett said in a statement. “With the Summits to the Sea project, we’re working to level the playing field and give everyone a shot.”
Increasing broadband access has been a major focus of the work being done by the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, which is leading the Central Coast Broadband Consortium. That includes helping support regional ISPs with everything from data analysis to technical expertise, GIS mapping services and assisting with grant applications. In an interview with Lookout in January, MBEP’s CEO and president, Tahra Goraya, said expanding broadband access remained a top priority for this year, noting that improving digital access is key to many other initiatives, including educational equity, civic participation and job expansion.
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