Bridgeport and Walker in northern Mono County will get gigabit-class fiber to the home service, if the California Public Utilities Commission votes to approve a $3.1 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), as recommended by a long delayed draft resolution prepared by staff.
The grant would go to Race Telecommunications, which has been building fiber to the home systems along and near the Digital 395 middle mile fiber route. Both the last mile systems and Digital 395 have benefited from CASF subsidies and, in the case of the Digital 395 project, a federal broadband stimulus grant.
Combined, the two towns have 444 homes which do not have access to broadband service at the CPUC’s minimum standard of 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds. Originally, another 125 homes in Coleville – four miles to the north of Walker – was included in the proposal, but was removed because Frontier Communications had exercised its right of first refusal under CASF rules, and promised to upgrade the town. As a result, Coleville will be left out of the FTTH project.
People living in Bridgeport and Walker, though, will be able to buy symmetrical gigabit service for $100 a month, as well as tiers at slower speeds, starting at $25 per month for symmetrical 25 Mbps service.
The Gigafy North 395 project was proposed by Race almost two years ago, on 31 December 2014. The CPUC is expected to vote on it at its 1 December 2016 meeting. At that point, it will be nearly 600 days late – CASF rules, as approved by the commission, set a 106 day deadline for staff to process a grant application and either reject it or get it in front of commissioners for a vote. Even if you start the clock counting from the point where the Frontier-served homes in Coleville were pulled out, the resolution is still more than a year overdue. Welcome, but overdue.