At 10:47am today, during the California Public Utilities Commission meeting in San Francisco, the Commission voted (4-1) to approve $16.7M in funding from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for Spiral Internet’s Bright Fiber Network project in western Nevada County. The grant ($16.2M) and loan ($500k) will provide 60% funding for the project. The 40% balance of the budget will be funded by private investment.
Spiral Internet (as Bright Fiber Network, Inc.) submitted a CASF grant application on February 1, 2013 to build phase one of a gigabit fiber optic Internet network to be located along Hwy 174 and Dog Bar Road in the southeastern part of Nevada County.
Phase one will provide gigabit (1,000 megabits per second) symmetrical Internet access speeds over a new 100% fiber optic network for 1,941 households. It will also serve businesses, schools, and public safety facilities within its 21 square mile imprint and along the route from the project area to its new network operations center located in the Nevada City Tech Center.
In San Francisco, Spiral CEO John Paul remarked that “Nevada County households are completely fed up with diminishing access to slow DSL service and fixed wireless providers that can only connect less than 10% of households due to high forestation and geography. Spiral’s Bright Fiber Network project will provide 21st century gigabit access to every household, business, school, healthcare facility, and public safety facility in our project areas.”
“In the end, the grant was really approved because of the incredible support from our community. Hundreds of emails and letters of support were sent to the Commissioners over the last few weeks. Key community leaders also traveled down to San Francisco and spoke publicly at an earlier CPUC Commission meeting.” John continued, “Since Spiral produced the 95959google event in March 2010, Nevada County told us loud and clear that reliable ultra-fast Internet access was essential here. We can finally deliver it.”
The state-of-the-art active ethernet network will be built all underground to each premise; providing sustainability and scalability for fifty to one hundred years into the future. It will be the first such network in rural northern California, and one of the few within California. Construction is expected to begin in late spring of 2016.
Nevada County residents are encouraged to map their location at
www.spiral.com/fiber as Spiral prepares for future phases of its network construction.
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Great news .I do have a question though we are in zone a but the map does not show all of our road and we are at the bottom of the road we are at 12052 Kodiak on
Hi John. We’ll make sure that your address is included. Thanks. John
Great news! So excited on the progress. We’re desperate up here on Scott’s Flat, good luck on the first phase!
Hi,
We are on Red Dog Rd just past You Bet Rd and our driveway is Autumn Oak Rd. Since our property is on Red Dog Rd if you need access for building the new system please let me know. I want to work from home but can’t unless I am wired for Internet per work guidelines.
I hope we are on the first area to be built.
Thanks,
Sue
Congratulations to John and everyone else that worked so very hard for so long to make this a reality and congratulations to Western Nevada County. I hope this network proves to be a big economic boon for the area without destroying the great quality of life that we all treasure so much.
realistically speaking, when will your service be available to the town of washington and its surrounding area? we anxiously await joining the 21st century.
Any updates on progress? It’s been over 3 months so just curious if things are on track, have you hit snags either technically or bureaucratically, etc.? Thanks!
Brian
Hi Brian. We’ve been in a long environmental assessment process which should wrap up this month. Stay tuned here, as we will be posting information about community meetings and construction schedules as they are announced. John
Hi James. Washington is in Zone B of our construction schedule. At this point in time, I would say that we’re about 2 1/2 years out in getting there. Stay tuned as we’re just starting Zone A soon. John
Thanks Bill. What’s great about a gigabit fiber optic network is that we can maintain the quality of life, since telecommuting and remote communication/collaboration actually works. Make sure you download and read our 2025 Vision report that was compiled by 25 community leaders. http://www.spiral.com/vision
Hi Sue. We will be mailing to all households in the area and have community meetings soon. We’ll definitely be working with each parcel on a one by one basis to determine best access. Thanks. John
Thanks Bob. We are excited too. You are in Zone B. So stay tuned. John
Thanks for writing this awesome article. I’m a long time reader but I’ve never been compelled to
leave a comment. I subscribed to your blog and shared this on my Facebook.
Thanks again for a great post!