Upstate California Connect Consortium
The Upstate California Connect Consortium (UCCC) is a consortium initially formed by the California State University, Chico’s Center for Economic Development. It is composed of organizations and entities the either have been involved in the need for and delivery of networked telecommunications. This consortium is composed of a wide variety of representatives and endorsers from local/regional governments, public safety, education, health care, community-based organizations, recreation/agriculture/parks, and business communities.
The UCCC is principally focused on five goals:
- Ensure community involvement;
- Develop a broadband infrastructure plan;
- Develop, implement, and maintain 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.
UCCC’s primary tasks for the first year include: 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 counties. 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 UCCC 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 UCCC will collaborate with the other Regional Consortia to make sure its Conceptual Design fits into an overall Northern California Broadband Plan.
Major deliverables during the first year include a conceptual design for the middle-mile and last-mile portions of the infrastructure plan, reports on existing installed fiber that could be used to serve as a portion of the middle-mile Conceptual Design and existing last-mile capabilities in each county and their potential to be included in the Conceptual Design, and a report assessing the availability of adoption programs in each county.
The UCCC requested and received CASF consortia funding of $149,898 in Year 1 with intention to renew for Years 2 and 3. In total, the UCCC received $448,184 for this Northern California regional consortium to serve its four counties.
Adapted from the summary prepared by the CPUC Communications Division
