Russ Steele

How embarrassing to have a nationally known industry observers conclude that political leadership in your community is an allusive mirage when it comes to building out critical broadband infrastructure.  And, then publishing the details in a well-received book. 

First, these leaders do not seem to grasp the economics of having robust broadband (BB). They do not consider high-speed Internet as one of the essential infrastructure utilities such as water, power, sewer, and transportation. Broadband has gone from nice to have to must-have status. Local leaders still think broadband is nice to have-not critical economic infrastructure. 

Yes, Nevada County’s Supervisors and City Council Members supported Spiral at the CPUC meetings, but only after a significant bit of cajoling by local BB entrepreneur John Paul and some encouragement from SEDCorp's Brent Smith.  As reported here previously, Susan Crawford, an independent observer, did not find much evidence of strong community leadership:

"Laissez-faire is not working for rural America, particularly in areas like Nevada City/Grass Valley where the local authorities are uninterested in intervening to ensure that their people have communications capacity."

". . .one of the key reasons that both Greensboro and Grass Valley/Nevada City are making such slow progress toward any flavor of publicly oriented Fiber is that there is no prominent public leader willing to stand behind it."

The CPUC held regional broadband meetings and invited County Supervisors to attend. At all the sessions I attended, Nevada County Supervisors were no-shows, while supervisors from surrounding counties participated in the meetings.  I recently participated in a community broadband meeting attended by Yuba and Sutter County Supervisors as they struggled to understand what action they need to take to bring robust broadband to their villages and neighborhoods. 

Steve Blum, a respected broadband consultant, explained the density issues. He went over the populations' density of each census block in the two-county area. It was clear that broadband existed in the densely populated census blocks, and not in less populated census blocks.  In his estimate without Local, State or Federal subsidies or significant population growth, many of the census blocks would never have broadband. 

Over 800 Communities all across the Nation have realized that the big telecom companies are ROI driven and are not going to serve small communities with a dispersed population, and as a result, they have organized, financed and built community networks. While small communities struggle to bring broadband access to households, the telco lawyers are in the state houses trying to stop the building for public community networks. Twenty-three states have restrictions on public networks, all due to the ‘excellent work’ of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom legal teams.  California is not there yet, but telecom lawyers are working hard to constrain competition in the state.  If they can’t or won’t provide it, they don’t want you to have it.

In many cases, communities have discovered dark fiber assets that could be exploited to enhance broadband coverage.  One village found their abandoned fire call box conduit and used this conduit to distribute fiber throughout the community.  Another community in Idaho took the same approach as they would pay for a new sewer system.  They floated a bond and built the fiber network for which they charge a hookup fee and a monthly use fee, just like they would for a new sewer connection.  They then opened the system to local ISPs to sell their services.  Subsequently, the local power utility started reading meters remotely, and the city started remote water meter reading.  As a result, the growth of usership increased the economic power of the infrastructure.

VAST has a fiber network snaking its way through rural parts of Nevada County. One neighborhood has already taken advantage of this resource, and from a local splice point established a neighborhood network with a connection to the VAST Network.   Something the County could be doing is to identify all the splice points on the fiber that is already in the ground now, especially on the underused VAST fiber. The Beckville Network off Newtown Road in Nevada City used one of those splice points for a point of presence.  

Nevada County should answer, how many other points of present opportunities are there on the VAST network, and determine which neighborhoods could be organized to follow the Beckville model. 

Where are the county leaders who should be thinking about how Nevada County citizens can use the existing fiber resources? Why are they turning up their palms and waiting for some telco to bless the community with broadband once the population increases? Have they been visited by the telco legal councils who are attempting to stifle competition?  In the 20 plus years I have worked on broadband issues, my gained experience supports Susan Crawford’s assessment.

Four years ago, the County was doing a General Plan Update.  I downloaded the draft PDF and used Adobe Reader to search for the keywords ‘broadband’ and ‘Internet’.  The result was zero! No mention of broadband or the Internet in its ‘Chapter 2 – Economic Development’.  After negotiating with the county staff working on the update, they finally put a weak paragraph acknowledging the need for BB in Chapter 1 – Land Use. 

One more example of a lack of broadband leadership. Supervisor, City Council Members, County Staff, and City Staff sit on the Economic Resource Council Board. The ERC sent out a survey to the business community and listed about 20 items that could inhibit their business. After checking the list, it was discovered that lack of BB was not on the list. So local companies wrote it in. It became the number one business inhibitor, and it was not even on the original survey.  That was almost ten years ago, and businesses are still struggling to get broadband. 

Last example.  Multiple fiber cable companies have laid fiber cable over Donner Pass on the way to the coast in Mendocino County. County supervisors approved the permits for this construction, and only Truckee was smart enough to demand an access point to one of the networks. Western Nevada County was not so bright, consequently we have no access points.  

If you have some contrary examples, clearly demonstrating local political leadership on broadband issues, please post them in the comments below.