Northeastern California Connect Consortium
The Northeastern California Connect Consortium (NECCC) is a consortium initially formed by the CSU Chico Center for Economic Development to participate in the work of the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF). In its present organizational set-up, it is composed organizations and entities that have experience in promoting the need for and delivery of networked telecommunications. The members of the NECCC are government entities (county, city/town, unincorporated districts, state and federal), Native‐American communities, educational institutions, libraries, public safety entities, health delivery facilities, community and non‐profit organizations, local businesses, telecommunications providers, electric utilities, and other organizations in the seven counties (Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou and Tehama) in the Northeast California area.
Two organizations serve as the management principals for the NECCC, namely the Corporation for Education Network Initiative in California (CENIC) and the Center for Economic Development (CED) at California State University, Chico. CENIC is the lead management organization with the overall management and fiscal responsibilities for this regional consortium.
The NECCC is principally focused on five goals:
- Ensure community involvement;
- Develop a broadband infrastructure plan;
- Develop and implement access plans;
- Develop and implement adoption and training plans and programs;
- Work with other regional consortia to ensure the development of a cohesive Northern California infrastructure.
For Year 1, NECCC will focus on the conceptual design for the broadband infrastructure plan that will provide a cohesive, integrated, and robust middle‐mile and last‐mile network infrastructure that will interconnect the counties together. To achieve this, current telecommunications providers will be asked to share information on their current middle‐ and last‐mile infrastructure, their future plans to deploy broadband to the communities they serve, their interest in cooperating in this project, and an assessment of whether their assets can be utilized as part of the Conceptual Design. A second focus of NECCC for the first year is the updating of the status of access in each county and assessing the status of training and adoption programs available across the three counties. Finally, the NECCC will collaborate with the other Regional Consortia to make sure its Conceptual Design fits into an overall Northern California Broadband Plan.
Major deliverables at the end of Year 1 include: a Conceptual Design for the middle‐mile and last-mile portions of the infrastructure plan; reports on the existing installed fiber that could be used to serve as a portion of this middle‐mile conceptual design; existing last‐mile capabilities that could potentially be included in the Conceptual Design; and, a report on the availability of adoption programs in each county.
The NECCC requested and received CASF consortia funding of $149,997 in Year 1 with intention to renew for Years 2 and 3. In total, the NECCC received $449,751 for this Northern California regional consortium to serve its seven counties.
Adapted from the summary prepared by the CPUC Communications Division
