Odd man out?
Considered a “served” community, Mammoth may be left behind in broadband push.
While there was plenty of good news to go around at last week’s Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium (ESCRBC) summit held in Ridgecrest Jan. 22 and 23, that good news may not extend to the Town of Mammoth Lakes.
Anyone recall an Inyo County press release of Nov. 14, 2014 regarding the County’s 21st century Obsidian Project?
The press release stated: “The County of Inyo issued a request for proposals looking for a partner to design, construct and operate a County-owned, open access, fiber-to-the-premise gigabit network that will serve every building and parcel in the Owens Valley and select neighboring communities.”
Turns out the County received two credible proposals, and at the ESCRBC summit, Inyo County Information Services Director Brandon Shults said that the County hopes to sign a contract with Praxis (the company that built Digital 395) by February 10.
Editor’s note: A conversation with Shults on Thursday indicated that negotiations are progressing, but Feb. 10 is optimistic.
According to a blog post on the ESCRBC website penned by Steve Blum, there are just under 8,000 homes in Inyo County. “All but a relative handful are in the project area, with the town of Bishop accounting for about two-thirds.”
While Shults acknowledged Bishop is a served community under its own governemental jurisdiction, the contract Inyo County anticipates signing can apply to Bishop. “Any entity can sign on,” he said.
As Shults explained, “The goal is big and loud (gigabit service). Yes, we want fiber to the premises throughout the Owens Valley. We’ve got the bandwidth to attract technology [companies]. We want to advertise [ourselves] as a gigabit district.”
Meanwhile, a wi-fi hot zone will be online in Bishop within a few weeks according to Bishop Chamber of Commerce President Julie Faber.
The zone will run from Mountain Ramber Brewery to Schat’s Bakery and will extend into Bishop City Park.
The initial funding for the project came through Superintendent of Schools Terry McAteer.
The system will be maintained by the Bishop Chamber.
Schat.net is doing the hookup.
Swall Meadows resident Stephen Kalish attended the event. He said “CASF (California Advanced Services Fund) grant applications recently submitted by Race Communications to bring FTTP (fiber to the premises) to Walker, Bridgeport, Mono City, Lee Vining, Benton, “South” Chalfant, Swall Meadows and Paradise in Mono County went unchallenged by existing service providers and will now be reviewed by the California Public Utlities Commission.”
Race already has CASF-approved funding to install fiber in Crowley Lake, Aspen Springs, Sunny Slopes and Chalfant in 2016.
In addition, Kalish said that Frontier Communications will use “a Connect America grant from the Federal Communications Commission to bring broadband service to Coleville this spring.”
So how come all the great news seems to dry up once you reach Highway 203?
John Baker of the Calfornia Public Utilities Commission presented at the conference and The Sheet spoke to him by phone this week.
Baker said that the legislation, which established the CASF, defines a served area as one that already enjoys advertised download speeds of 6 mbps (megabytes per second) and upload speeds of 1.5 mbps.
“The way the law is written talks about capacity as opposed to real-life experience,” he said.
The law obviously does not contemplate a town of 7,000 which balloons to five times that size during peak visitation periods.
Baker said that although Digital 395 has been selling bandwidth up and down the 395 corridor to various companies, providers [like Suddenlink] like to maintain control of their networks versus buying bandwidth from outside providers.
Suddenlink, he said, can literally increase the bandwidth available to Mammoth exponentially but it would then lose a measure of control over the data.
Digital 395, he explained, is a wholesaler and not a “last-mile service provider.”
Brent Truax, general Manager of the Sierra Nevada Resort in Mammoth, said that the resort currently offers 80 megabytes of internet capacity right now. But on a busy day, he estimates there might be 700 devices all trying to access that 80 megabytes at the same time. Streaming a movie is out of the question, he said.
Truax added that he’s reached out to many people in an attempt to improve the resort’s internet capacity and has been told simply, “If you don’t get fiber to the premises, we can’t do a thing for you.”
The cost? Suddenlink quoted $80,000.
At the broadband summit, Dan Spurgeon, General Manager of the Marriott Springhill Suites in Ridgecrest, spun a similar tale.
According to another blog post on the ESCRBC site made by Steve Blum, Spurgeon said, “Five of you can take out my internet and I have 93 rooms.”
Despite a recent 50 megabyte capacity upgrade on the property, Spurgeon said demand for bandwidth is growing by 40% a year and he will soon need to double his capacity again.
Like Mammoth, Ridgecrest is considered a “served” community and ineligible for the CASF grant program.
So what does a gigabit project look like? Boron, which has 892 households, is a $4.8 million project according to John Baker.
The CASF came through with a 60% grant ($2.9 million).
Dividing the remainder, you come to a figure of $3,200 per hook up.
Baker said this number is fairly typical, though he said it ran a little higher in the foothill communities on the other side of the Sierra.
Shults said his estimates ran about $2,500 per parcel.
What was his motivation to push the Obsidian Project?
It appears two-fold. 1.) The current providers in place were sluggish in their response. 2.) “It’s in the ground fifteen feet away from some of the communities that want it.”
