Search Results for: inyo networks

Digital 395 proposes Inyo County FTTH expansion

3 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for a bigger version.

Four more remote towns in the eastern California desert are in line for gigabit-class fiber-to-the-home service, thanks to the Digital 395 middle mile network that stretches more than 500 miles down the east side of the Sierra Nevada, from Reno to Barstow.

Inyo Networks – one of the companies behind the Digital 395 project – is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $4.4 million to extend its middle fiber another 20 miles, reaching from Olancha to Keeler and Darwin, and to build FTTH systems in those three communities, plus the nearby town of Cartago.… More

California projects line up for federal ReConnect broadband funds, but competition is stiff

28 April 2020 by Steve Blum
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Torres martinez project area

Five broadband projects in California were proposed for federal agriculture department funding in the second round of ReConnect broadband grant and loan applications. That’s five more than the first round in 2019, so that’s progress of a sort. They’ll compete with more than 200 other projects in other states for $300 in grants and $300 million in loans, plus another $100 million included in the $2 trillion federal covid–19 stimulus bill that’ll be available to projects submitted in both rounds.… More

Caltech turns eastern California fiber network into earthquake detector

22 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Caltech readout

Fiber optic networks do more than just ride out major earthquakes without dropping a bit. They can also detect and collect data on the quakes themselves. Two major quakes – magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 – hit eastern California on 4 and 5 July 2019 respectively, in the high desert of Kern and San Bernardino counties, where seismometers aren’t thick on the ground. To understand what happened, and what continues to happen, Caltech scientists needed to quickly get more sensors into the field.… More

California-funded fiber keeps (most) quake hit communities connected

Digital 395 19sep2013

I planned to write about Trona and Searle Valley today, but not with earthquakes in mind. Instead, I was going to look at a recent California Public Utilities Commission ruling that, in effect, disavowed a previous and pusillanimous decision to deny broadband infrastructure grants in those two towns. That’s for later. For now, it’s about the eastern California communities that got state and federal broadband grants and, as a result, maintained modern, gigabit-class broadband connectivity even as two major earthquakes – 7.1 and 6.4 magnitude – and a continuing swarm of fore and aftershocks hit.… More

CPUC considers FTTH upgrade subsidy for Marin County town

3 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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Bolinas, a coastal community of about 700 homes in Marin County, is up for a $1.9 million broadband infrastructure subsidy from the California Public Utilities Commission next week. It’s the first grant proposal submitted to, and considered by, the CPUC since assembly bill 1665 was signed into law last year by governor Jerry Brown.

AB 1665 imposed severe restrictions on how money from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) can be spent. It lowered California’s minimum broadband standard to 6 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload speeds – if service is available at that level, then the legislature reckons no upgrade is needed.… More

AT&T, Frontier want right of the first night in rural California

16 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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One of the perks that telco and cable lobbyists slipped into a broadband infrastructure subsidy bill pending in the California senate is the right to take the first look at proposed projects in unserved rural areas, so they can decide whether or not they want to be the ones to consummate the deal. In medieval times (or at least in the movie Braveheart) something very similar was called jus primae noctis, the right of the first night, where a feudal lord claimed the privilege of taking a newly wedded bride to bed.… More

Middle mile fiber link to California's north coast gets $47 million

24 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Digital 299 middle mile fiber project will receive a $47 million subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund. The line begins in Shasta County, just south of Redding where it will connect to long haul fiber on the I-5 corridor, and runs along State Route 299 through Trinity County, ending on the coast in Humboldt County at Eureka, with laterals to a potential submarine cable landing site on Arcata Bay and Humboldt State’s marine lab in Trinidad.… More

All or nothing for Digital 299 tomorrow

22 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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Update, 23 March 2017: the CPUC voted 4 to 1 to approve the Digital 299 grant this morning.

The Digital 299 middle mile fiber system will either get all of the $47 million that its backers are requesting from the California Advanced Services Fund, or it won’t be subsidised at all. The California Public Utilities Commission will make that choice tomorrow, assuming the current schedule holds, when it considers whether or not to fund a 300-mile fiber route that would begin near Redding, where it would connect to existing fiber lines along the I-5 corridor, and run through Trinity County and terminate on the Humboldt County coast, at Eureka and Trinidad.… More

More push for more money for northern California middle mile project

31 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Digital 299 middle mile fiber project under consideration for a $42 million subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) will have been under review for a year and half, if the California Public Utilities Commission votes on it as scheduled next week. Yesterday was the deadline for submitting comments – pro or con – and seven organisations did so.

The applicant, Inyo Networks, is asking the commission to increase the grant to $49 million.… More

Fiber route from California's north coast to central valley in line for $42 million subsidy

28 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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Another major middle mile fiber project is queued up for approval at the California Public Utilities Commission. A draft decision that would grant a $42 million subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to the Digital 299 project was published just before the Christmas break and is expected to be up for a vote by commissioners in February. Inyo Networks – the company behind the Digital 395 system and other CASF-funded projects – made the proposal in August 2015.… More