Bolinas’s connection to the outside world is about to get a whole lot faster. Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission awarded Inyo Networks a $1.87 million grant to deploy broadband internet infrastructure in the town, which makes the short list of priority unserved areas in the state.
Both the county and the Bolinas Community Public Utility District have supported Inyo, headquartered in Rancho Cucamonga in southern California, to apply for the grant. Horizon Cable, which already serves much of West Marin, had hoped to expand to Bolinas and challenged the application in January.
That challenge was rejected due to the infeasibility of Horizon’s proposal and its absence in the town, according to the state commission.
Jennifer Blackman, BCPUD’s general manager, was enthusiastic about the promise of faster connectivity. The district voted in early 2017 to co-sponsor the project in Bolinas, which is a collaboration with Muir Beach LAN.
“The feedback we have from residents is that this is a very important service,” she said. “We are looking at this from a public health and safety perspective, as it’s critical to have our core agencies have this kind of access to broadband services—it’s part of the 21st century.”
By establishing new infrastructure, Inyo promises to bring the rate of connectivity in Bolinas to maximum speeds of one gigabit for $90 per month. For perspective, that’s about seven to nine times as fast as the 100 to 130 megabits of connectivity most Marin residents get using high-speed internet from Comcast.
Inyo estimates that 80 percent of Bolinas customers—or 500 homes and businesses—will subscribe to the new service. Currently, residents either use Muir Beach LAN, AT&T, or have their own satellites. Some residents have criticized AT&T in recent years for unreliability, high rates and resistance to upgrades.
Due to a recent state law, however, Inyo was unable to nab funds for 73 households dispersed in Dogtown and on Horseshoe Hill Road, which may be stuck with AT&T at least for a few years. According to A.B. 1665, signed into law last October, established providers get priority if they plan to use federal funds to improve service, and AT&T has promised to do for that area by 2020. (Inyo may dispute this with the state utilities commission in the coming weeks to include the households in its service area.)
For the rest of Bolinas, Inyo will initially connect the village with a microwave radio link, a very high frequency radio technology, from Berkeley through transmitter sites on Mount Tamalpais and Muir Beach in collaboration with Muir Beach LAN. Primarily, construction will involve attaching fiber optic cables to the existing poles, though some homes and businesses may require new underground structures.
Ultimately, as demand in Bolinas grows, the county hopes that Inyo, or the best bidder, will connect the infrastructure to a fiber optic network that Inyo recently completed in Nicasio.
This month, the company launched fiber optic broadband service for 220 homes in Nicasio—identified in 2016 as an underserved community. Sixty percent of the $2.5 million project was funded by the state commission and the rest was raised by residents.
The company tapped into unused fiber-optic cables installed in 2014 to serve the nearby Lucasfilm facilities off Lucas Valley Road.
In February, the state commission published a draft white paper titled “High Impact Areas for Broadband Availability” and identified Bolinas in a group of 13 areas thought to “represent the best ‘bang for the buck’ for deploying broadband internet infrastructure to more California households.” Aside from Cobb in Lake County, most of the other areas are in Southern California.
Peter Pratt, a county-hired consultant working with the ad hoc Marin County Broadband Task Force that has focused on bringing broadband to West Marin in recent years, estimated that Inyo will likely finish up work in Nicasio by the end of the summer and begin construction in Bolinas by September. He noted the “exceptional turnaround time” of the Bolinas grant, which was allocated from the California Advanced Services Fund, or CASF, and covers 60 percent of the estimated cost.
Mr. Pratt said Inyo and its investment partners plan to raise the remaining funds. Per the grant’s terms, the company must complete the project within two years.
Horizon’s challenge
Last December, Kevin Daniel, Horizon’s president, filed a confidential objection with the California Public Utilities Commission in hopes of halting Inyo’s efforts.
He told the Light that it was essential to the welfare of his small business that he block Inyo from receiving the grant.
Currently, the Point Reyes Station-based company serves around 1,400 customers across Point Reyes Station, Inverness, Inverness Park, Olema, Dillon Beach and Stinson Beach.
Mr. Daniel had proposed expanding his existing service in Stinson Beach to Bolinas by running a bore under the lagoon. He was working on obtaining permits from agencies such as the California Coastal Commission and Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and said that he expected to have the necessary permits from the Army Corps of Engineers by the end of the year.
Mr. Daniel also said he’s spent about $50,000 of his own money to fund the biological assessments and archaeological studies required for conducting a project in the Bolinas Lagoon.
But his prospects were viewed as unrealistic by some, including the state commission.
According to a May 10 letter, the agency explained that the basis of Horizon’s challenge was A.B. 1665, which primarily prohibits any entity from applying for CASF funding for projects located where federal funding has already been designated. (Supervisor Rodoni lobbied against the bill, given that most of West Marin, besides Bolinas, has been nominated for federal funds).
The law also prohibits the commission from awarding funding to a project applicant if the existing facility-based broadband provider demonstrates that it will deploy broadband or upgrade existing broadband service throughout the proposed project area within 180 days of the commission’s annual offer.
Mr. Daniel hoped to leverage the new law and prove that Horizon could be that existing provider, asserting that he planned to offer broadband service to Bolinas by the end of 2018.
But the C.P.U.C.’s letter said Horizon does not qualify as an existing facility-based provider because it does not already serve the project area or own or operate facilities in the community.
The commission also challenged the feasibility and timeline of Horizon’s proposed method to bring broadband to the village, which would have required permitting from a long list of federal, state and local agencies.
“Based on consultation with the CEQA team and contacts at the California Coastal Commission, as well as input from the Bolinas Community Public Utility District, staff determined that Horizon is not guaranteed to receive those permits, let alone in the timeframe it anticipates,” the commission’s letter states.
The commission determined that because Horizon’s challenge was inadequate, Inyo was eligible for the funding.
“Bolinas is relatively isolated as a small community surrounded by a rural area, and it’s therefore very expensive to bring connectivity to it,” Mr. Pratt said. “Without the state subsidies, it would have been very unlikely that any entity, say AT&T or Horizon, would have been able to provide this to Bolinas in the near term.”
Maps of Inyo’s new service area are available on the C.P.U.C.’s website under the “Bolinas Gigabit Network” link listed on the application project summaries page. Beginning next week, Bolinas residents will also be able to pre-register their interest in services on a new page that will be available from inyonetworks.com/.