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Santa Cruz Breaks Ground on Plan for $50 Gigabit Broadband

Last year, Santa Cruz announced a partnership to deliver gigabit fiber to city locals with the help of a local ISP by the name of Cruzio. The $45 million project, which will take years to fully complete, will not be funded by taxes, but through bonds. The effort was, like so many before it, driven by dissatisfaction with the broadband services being provided to locals by incumbents like AT&T and Comcast.

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The Central Coast Broadband Consortium, using PUC data, gives Santa Cruz a "D" grade for broadband availability. The city also ranks 447 out of 505 California cities for average Internet speed, according to data compiled by Guevara.

Cruzio and the city hopes to fix that by delivering gigabit connections to every home and business in the city. According to a company announcement, Cruzio and the city are breaking ground on the project this week, with plans to light up the service for 1,000 initial homes sometime this fall.

“The best way to demonstrate how successful this network can be is to just start building it,” said Cruzio’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, Chris Neklason. “The City Council and staff have been fantastically encouraging and we decided the time was right to take that encouragement and put it into action.”

Cruzio proceeds to note they're aiming for a $50 per month price point for its gigabit service, much faster and cheaper than regional incumbents.

“We’re thrilled about the low price we can offer City residents,” continued Dolgenos. “We are aiming for $50 per month for gigabit internet — one of the lowest prices in the whole country. This is not an elite service, we want to make it affordable to as many people as possible.”

More detail can be found over at the Cruzio website.

Most recommended from 34 comments



Eddy120876
join:2009-02-16
Bronx, NY

10 recommendations

Eddy120876

Member

Thats the way to take on Crappy service

Too bad it will take years to start but at least they are doing it it. Give AT&T and Comcast hell. More Fiber the better we can catch up on the rest of the world. Go Santa Cruz GO!!!
existenz
join:2014-02-12

4 recommendations

existenz

Member

3rd party ISP to operate muni may be the way to go...

A burb of KC built out their own fiber with casino revenue and struggled to operate. A 3rd party local ISP then took over operations, offers residential Gigabit for 'free' (after $300 activation fee) and the ISP profits from providing market rate service to biz. The city funds about $100K/yr if I recall to help with maintenance.

Using a 3rd party ISP to operate muni fiber looks to be a pretty good model. Will be interesting to see how this plays out long term - where residential Gbit is 'free' and the ISP profits from biz. Even better would be open access for any ISP to operate.

»linkcity.org/