Occidental homes to get high-speed internet through $7.6 million state grant

Residents of rural Occidental are finally poised to have access to affordable high-speed internet service through a $7.6 million state grant that will fund infrastructure the private sector would not.

The grant, approved earlier this month by the California Public Utilities Commission, is expected to finance installation of fiber-to-home network for ?as many as 757 households along Joy Road and nearby areas, where residents have struggled for years to join the digital ?world.

The area - hilly terrain studded with redwood groves, vineyards, small farms and widely dispersed homes - is among numerous rural regions around California for which the cost of deploying infrastructure that would serve small populations doesn’t usually pencil out for commercial enterprises.

Enter Race Telecommunications Inc., which is working with a variety of rural communities, utilizing funding from the California Advanced Services Fund, a state program established ?to subsidize some of the costs and level the playing field for underserved and unserved neighborhoods.

The new grant is intended to fund 70 percent of the cost of installing fiber-optic cable for Occidental, one of five priority areas in Sonoma County that have been the focus of grass-roots advocacy by Access Sonoma Broadband and the North Bay/North Coast Broadband Consortium, which includes Sonoma, Mendocino, Marin and Napa counties.

Access Sonoma Broadband Chairman Mike Nicholls said the project assumes conservatively that at least 68 percent of those in the service area will sign up with Race Telecommunications, allowing the company to begin seeing a return on their investment in the third year.

He said the effort provided a framework for adding service to other North Bay communities. Jenner, rural Cazadero and the Dry Creek area are priority targets.

“It’s something we have worked on for the last four or five years” in Occidental, Nicholls said.

“It’s nice to have that first bit of success, and we’re going to work diligently on the same issues with other isolated communities.”

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story mistated the member counties of the North Bay/North Coast Broadband Consortium.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.