A bill that would have helped fund high-speed broadband Internet access in Nicasio was scrapped last week, leaving proponents of the project concerned that plans to build an infrastructure of fiber-optic cables linked to a network owned by filmmaker George Lucas may not materialize as soon as they had hoped.
The Nicasio Broadband Project proposes to connect broadband to 215 houses, the school, the volunteer fire department, the county’s Department of Public Works corporation yard and two wireless transmitter sites that would provide high-speed wireless services to Nicasio homes too far away to hook into the fiber optic lines. Advocates have hailed it as the first step in a larger effort to bring reliable, high-speed Internet access to more homes in West Marin, where many residents dwell in digital darkness; they view Nicasio as the first link in a future fiber-optic chain branching from Nicasio up to Dillon Beach and down to Bolinas.
Nicasio is unique in its proximity to a fiber optic cable containing 288 strands of high-capacity fiber, into which Mr. Lucas taps just a few dozen. The cable runs in a loop from Skywalker Ranch to San Rafael, following Lucas Valley Road to Nicasio Valley Road, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Highway 101.
“Nicasio is a critical piece of our effort to creating an east-west connection,” said Liza Crosse, an aide to Supervisor Steve Kinsey, who has been working to secure funding for the project.
But last week, Assemblyman Mark Stone, of Santa Cruz, scrapped a bill he authored that would have pumped more money into the California Advanced Services Fund, which subsidizes projects aimed at building broadband infrastructure in communities where high-speed Internet is scarce or nonexistent. Created in 2007, the fund authorizes the California Public Utilities Commission to collect $315 million in Internet customer surcharges through 2020. Assemblyman Stone’s bill would have added an extra $350 million to the fund through 2023.
In November, the utilities commission accepted a grant application from Vallejo-based Inyo Networks for roughly $1.7 million for the Nicasio project. With that money secured, local homeowners and business owners would be tapped to raise the remainder of the project’s estimated $2.5 million budget, according to Peter Pratt, a consultant hired by the county as a liaison with Inyo Networks.
The state fund is currently overcommitted to other projects similar to Nicasio’s by as much as $20 million, Mr. Pratt said, and without additional funds it is unclear whether the project could move forward. “We’re very hopeful for its prospects,” Mr. Pratt said. “But if the money is not re-appropriated, it’s a crap-shoot if we can get this application funded.”
Broadband advocates have blamed large Internet providers like AT&T for the bill’s demise. According to Craig Scholer, a legislative aide in Assemblyman Stone’s office, AT&T and the California Cable and Telecommunications Association—which represents dozens of major companies like Comcast—took issue with the amount of surcharge money the bill specified and cited concerns about future “overbuild” in their customer areas. “We were trying to work with them on some language they were comfortable with,” Mr. Scholer said. “We just couldn’t get there in time.”
A second bill—A.B. 2310, which was simultaneously presented last week to the Assembly’s Committee on Utilities and Commerce—would have authorized the utilities commission to collect a smaller amount, $100 million, and distribute it through a competitive bidding process. That bill, said Kate Ijams, a spokeswoman for AT&T, would have called for the state fund to cover all of a project’s costs, not just 70 percent.
But supporters of Assemblyman Stone’s bill said A.B. 2310, which was introduced by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, of Hayward, was designed to stall any extension of the state fund. A.B. 2310 was also pulled by its author shortly after Assemblyman Stone’s bill was scrapped.
“I am deeply disappointed that the major telecommunication companies successfully torpedoed the essential refilling of C.P.U.C. coffers intended to help underserved communities around the state that are falling behind without adequate broadband services,” Supervisor Kinsey told the Light. “Nonetheless, I will continue to work with motivated Nicasio residents and the County’s exceptional expert, Peter Pratt, to fund the extension of fiber optics into their community.”
Nicasio is the first of seven priority areas in West Marin identified by the North Bay/North Coast Broadband Consortium as in need of high-speed Internet. Formed over a year ago, the consortium includes Mendocino, Napa, Sonoma and Marin Counties, which have all banded together to apply for state grants.
But without future money from the state fund, the larger West Marin fiber optic plan is stuck in limbo. Still, Ms. Crosse believes the Nicasio project will happen, one way or another. She said the growing and loud demand for high-speed Internet in rural areas will eventually force state legislators to act. “We do everything we can do to get ready. So we sit and wait, sometimes for years, but when the money comes we’ll be ready,” she said.
Likewise, Senator Mike McGuire—who co-authored the bill, as did Assemblyman Marc Levine—said he wants to see the California Advanced Services Fund restocked as soon as possible. He suggested that lawmakers would not shut out AT&T or any other major telecommunications companies in future talks surrounding the state fund.
“We believe it is going to be absolutely necessary to work with all sides in order to fulfill our commitments to Californians,” Senator McGuire said.
In the meantime, high-speed Internet purveyors who do not deal in fiber optic see an opportunity. Novato resident Peter Skeels, whose company WebPerception provides high-speed wireless to some homes in Nicasio, has said that while wireless may not be as fast as fiber optics, it would cost roughly the same for customers—around $100 a month—and could reach far more households. In an opinion piece published in the Light in February, Mr. Skeels wrote that his wireless service could reach “more than 1,000 homes for the same amount of money” than it would cost to provide 250 homes with fiber.
One of Mr. Skeels’s customers, Nicasio rancher Mark Pasternak, agreed that broadening the range of wireless would work just fine. He also questioned whether the valley’s terrain would allow enough residents to receive fiber-optic Internet to justify the project’s price tag, which he further hoped would not be foisted onto every Nicasio taxpayer.
“There’s no way they’d be able to get fiber optics back to my house, period,” said Mr. Pasternak. “I’m not a big fan of it, but if they get the government to pay for it I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I’m not going to sign up.”
Mr. Skeels said he has talked with the Nicasio Land Owners Association about whether his wireless service could be used in tandem with the new fiber optic network to reach every house in Nicasio. Should the application with the state fund fall apart, Eric Blantz, who heads the group’s Internet-solutions committee, said the association would welcome Mr. Skeels’s proposal for an extended wireless network.
Still, Mr. Blantz is concerned that Mr. Skeels’s wireless service requires a line-of-sight connection between a house and a wireless repeater, which may be installed on a neighbor’s property to bring Internet to several other homes. Right now, nothing prevents a resident from removing the repeater, leaving the other homes in the wireless network blacked out.
“We need to have a reliably acceptable, legal solution,” Mr. Blantz said. “Right now, it’s cowboy Wi-Fi out here.”