Progress on rural broadband moving forward for South Shore Lake Tahoe

South Shore Lake Tahoe businesses and residents who are frustrated with their Internet service — whether it’s slow speeds, spotty service or high prices — now may have a mechanism to do something about it.

The Gold Country Broadband Consortium is facilitating community meetings throughout the region that bring together potential broadband customers with service providers. The Consortium will host a meeting on Monday, June 24, to hear residents' and business' concerns about Internet service in the South Lake Tahoe and Meyers areas. The meeting will be from 6:45 to 8 p.m. at the South Lake Tahoe Recreation Complex, 1180 Rufus Allen Blvd. (Aspen Room).

Once they’re together in the same room, providers get a sense of the demand for broadband services in an area and often can offer solutions. And when multiple broadband providers are present, they begin to compete for customers’ business, trying to match or top each other’s deals.

“The more people we have in the room, the more leverage we have,” said Russ Steele, a consultant working with the Gold Country Broadband Consortium.

The Gold Country consortium covers four counties — El Dorado, Placer, Nevada and Sierra — as well as part of Alpine County. Its territory includes the California portion of the Lake Tahoe Basin. It’s being facilitated by Auburn-based Sierra Economic Development Corporation, also known as SEDCorp.

While there are 13 other broadband consortia around the state, the Gold Country group is unique in implementing a “free market approach” by putting customers and providers directly in contact, Steele said.
The consortium’s activities were discussed during a May 23 meeting in Camino.

“Internet service providers want your business,” SEDCorp CEO Brent Smith told attendees. “They just didn’t know you exist.”

The Gold Country consortium is using a series of community meetings to try to bring broadband service to as many people in its territory as possible. SEDCorp works with a neighborhood “champion” to set up the sessions. As of late May, nine community meetings had been held: two in El Dorado County, two in Placer County and five in Nevada County.

One of the most successful community meetings to date took place last month in Pleasant Valley, just outside Placerville. About 50 people gathered, along with representatives of three service providers, to discuss the community’s broadband needs. Pleasant Valley residents have been limited to dial-up Internet access.

As it turned out, one of the providers at the meeting, Shingle Springs-based Cal.net, is just about to launch service in Pleasant Valley. Cal.net uses fixed wireless technology to provide broadband service. A transmitting tower installed in a neighborhood communicates with a fixed receiver placed at a home or business.

After paying a $195 installation fee, Cal.net’s Pleasant Valley customers will pay from $54.95 a month for 1.5 Mbps service (download speed), to $129.95 a month for 6 Mbps service, with two other plans in between. There are no data caps or contracts.

Cal.net has been exploring the Lake Tahoe area as a possible market, according to Chief Technology Officer Ken Garnett. A tower site has been identified at the South Shore. But since the area is already served by AT&T and Charter, Garnett wasn’t sure if it made business sense for Cal.net to expand to Tahoe. Whether Cal.net can provide Internet service at rates that are more affordable than other providers is a factor that might be considered, Garnett said.

Defining ‘broadband’
In general, broadband is considered to be technology that allows files to be uploaded to and downloaded from the Internet efficiently. But exact transfer speeds that qualify as broadband depend on who you ask.
In its most recent annual “Broadband Report,” the FCC defines broadband as download speeds of 4 Mbps and upload speeds of 1 Mbps.

In California, the CPUC defines broadband as speeds great than 768 Kbps down and 200 Kbps up. At the same time, the CPUC considers anyone with download speeds of less than 6 Mbps as “underserved.”

Broadband technology includes DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service, which utilizes copper telephone lines; cable modem; fiber optic; wireless; and satellite.

While fiber optic cables may be in place along major thoroughfares, and in use by larger institutions, bringing the fiber to individual addresses is an expensive hurdle to overcome. Satellite Internet service suffers from long lag times for accessing data and is susceptible to weather interruptions.

But satellite providers, including some who are competing for business in El Dorado County, are improving their technology to make satellite a more feasible option for Internet service, according to a presentation at the May 23 consortium meeting.

Wireless signals don’t travel well through the forest, making more towers necessary in wooded areas such as El Dorado County.

But Cal.net is testing a new technology to improve wireless performance through the trees. Called TV White Space or TVWS, the technology employs unused TV channels, whose signals can travel over rough, tree-laden terrain, according to a press release. Cal.net is testing the service in Swansboro, Garden Valley and part of Pleasant Valley, Garnett said. Wider deployment of the service is expected after the FCC certifies the equipment.
While residential customers are usually most concerned about download speeds, many businesses are looking for faster upload speeds as well, Steele said. For example, companies that store files on off-site secure servers will want fast uploads as well as downloads.

Mapping project
The Gold Country Broadband Consortium is also tackling a mapping project, in which people in the region are asked to test their Internet speeds and send them to the consortium along with their physical address. This is another way to see where broadband service is lacking. In addition, the mapping will show how accurate service providers’ claims are of providing certain speeds in particular areas, Steele said. The maps will be shared with the CPUC.

The broadband consortia, including the Gold Country group, are funded by the California Advanced Services Fund, or CASF, a surcharge on telecommunications customers’ bills. The surcharge has varied since it was first implemented in January 2008; as of April 1, it is 0.164 percent of intrastate service charges.
The purpose of the fund is to “bridge the ‘digital divide’ in unserved and underserved areas in the state,” according to the CPUC website.

The Gold Country consortium was launched in March 2012 and has received $150,000 a year for its first two years of operation. It will seek funding for a third year.

Go here to learn more.

— This article appeared in the June 1-15, 2013, edition of the Tahoe Business Monitor.