Marin County and AT&T are vying for $11 million in federal funds to install wired internet to homes in Tomales, Dillon Beach and Muir Beach as a part of a $5.25 billion statewide project to bring equitable, fast internet through a web of middle-mile and last-mile networks. 

The county, which submitted a proposal for the project in September, hopes to supply optical fiber to roughly 650 homes across the three villages. The state aims to install a middle-mile fiber cable underground along Highway 1 by 2026, with last-mile connections for homes every half-mile. 

AT&T already has a fiber cable along Highway 1 that it would utilize if it wins the contract. In its application, the company offered to match the $11 million in federal funds but said it would spend 85 percent of the money to bolster its domain along the 101 corridor and to serve Muir Beach. That would leave just $3.6 million for around 400 homes in Tomales and Dillon Beach—about 100 fewer than the county hopes to serve. 

Bruce Vogen, a broadband systems engineer for the county’s information services department, said if the county wins the bid, it would lease AT&T’s coastal middle-mile network until the state’s network is up and running. 

Mr. Vogen said the county will be objecting to AT&T’s bid for the project, arguing that the company aims to use public funds to grow its network in Central Marin—an area already largely covered by Comcast. 

“The only places that should qualify are every home in these areas,” he said. “There shouldn’t be a dime going into urban Marin.”

The California Public Utilities Commission is expected to select a contractor by March and start the year-long project by the end of 2024. 

Mr. Vogen said the wireline connections will allow for speeds up to eight times faster than current speeds offered by local providers who operate on fixed wireless—a type of internet service that relies on antennae to transmit and receive signals in the form of radio waves. Though fixed wireless is capable of transmitting at the same speeds as wireline, West Marin’s transmissions are not strong enough to achieve those speeds.

“Everyone who lives in one of those homes will be getting significantly better service at a much better cost,” Mr. Vogen said. “You couldn’t be a radiologist living in one of those homes on those networks.”

The difference in speed likely will not mean much for the average household sending emails, watching movies and making video calls. But residents who live stream on services like Twitch or doctors, CAD workers and film editors uploading unusually large files would likely benefit from the upgrade. 

Two local companies, Muir Beach LAN and Tomales Bay LAN, currently provide fixed wireless internet to roughly 800 customers, and Dillon Beach Internet Service serves roughly 300 customers. These providers charge anywhere from $60 to $160 a month for a minimum of 125 megabits per second download speed. Mr. Vogen said the new service would charge from $50 to $60 per connection and offer a minimum download speed of 1,000 megabits per second. 

He said the county is working on ways to involve local providers in the project. 

“The county wants some kind of public ownership of this, but that’s not settled yet,” he said. “The owners of local service providers could manage or own part of this. But if [the project] goes to AT&T, it’s a moot point.”

Matt Porter, an operator for Tomales Bay LAN, told the Light that he knows very little about the project and how it will affect local providers.

“There’s a lot of questions as to how this will work,” Mr. Porter said. “We have a lot of infrastructure already in place throughout the coast from Muir to Dillon, and we’re hoping that we can utilize this new fiber cable and integrate it into our existing structure. But we just don’t know.”

The owners of Dillon Beach Internet Service and Muir Beach LAN declined to comment on the project. 

Bringing wired internet to the three villages will cost an average of $17,000 per home, Mr. Vogen said. Smaller clusters of across West Marin, and about 300 residences on Tomales Bay’s east shore and in Chileno Valley, were considered for the project but were economically infeasible to include. Homes on the east shore would have cost an additional $28,000 per household because of coastal and environmental permits, and Chileno Valley is too far from the cable’s location, Mr. Vogen said. 

The county will apply for separate federal funding in 2024 to address those areas.

The last-mile wirelines—the connections to homes from the middle-mile line on Highway 1—would be installed both above and below ground, depending on the topography of a neighborhood. Service in Muir Beach would be installed solely above ground on poles. Tomales, with its gridded blocks and flatter topography, would be wired almost completely underground except for a pole or two. In Dillon Beach, some areas would be above ground and some below.

The federal funds are available through a state bill Gov. Gavin Newsom approved in 2021. The bill allocated $3.25 billion to establish 10,000 miles of middle-mile fiber and another $2 billion for last-mile connections to local communities.

The bill aims to provide high-speed broadband access throughout the state by 2026. The $2 billion for last-mile connections was split between urban and rural counties across the state. Marin, considered an urban county, qualified for $11 million. 

The $3.25 billion will go toward building over 10,000 miles of middle-mile fiber cable across the state, including 73 miles in Marin that will run along Highway 1 in the west and along Highway 101 in the east.