After more than a year of discussions, data gathering and number crunching, the California Broadband Task Force released this week its final findings and recommendations.

The report found that 96 percent of California households have access to basic broadband, or high-speed Internet, which allows users to more quickly access and share a nearly limitless wealth of information, news and entertainment compared to older telephone dial-up
modems.

The report puts California as a leader in broadband availability among all 50 U.S. states, but also lays out a plan to keep that momementum moving forward.

Its findings are also a stark reminder of the chronic problems Humboldt County residents, businesses and government leaders are all to aware of: rural counties are struggling to keep up with other parts of the state in vital infrastructure.

The 84-page “State of Connectivity: Building Innovation Through Broadband” report shows that approximately 2,000 communities are still unable to access high-speed Internet, only half of Californians have access to broadband at even the lowest speeds and only
slightly more than half of California households actually use broadband.

The task force found that 1.4 million of California’s 35.9 million — mostly rural — residents lack Internet service at any speed.

For the North Coast, 33 percent of households lack any broadband at all, according to the task force report.

For Humboldt County, high-speed Internet and other vital telecommunications is largely dependant on a single fiber-optic cable buried by AT&T along U.S. Highway 101 in 2003 following a lengthy right-of-way battle with Caltrans that delayed the project for nearly two years.

Since its deployment, the fiber-optic cable has been severed numerous times by digging, high winds and even a fire, which significantly disrupted businesses, banking and telecommunications for hours.

The unpredictable outages have fueled an increasing demand by a diverse number of residents, groups and business leaders for a second fiber-optic cable to ensure access reliability for existing users and for attracting future business growth.

Rollin Richmond, president of Humboldt State University and one of two locally appointed members of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 19-member Broadband Task Force formed in 2006, said Internet service is doubly essential to the North Coast region in view of its “deep-seated and long-term” economic problems.

Richmond is urging bold action in response to the report and issued a statement Thursday linking the report with the county’s economy, which he cites as being at its lowest point since 1997 in terms of sales.

Dale Bonner, Broadband Task Force co-chair, says the seven recommendations developed in the report address how to reach communities with little or no access, while increasing broadband adoption rates statewide.

“Implementing these recommendations will create jobs, improve public health and safety and expand educational opportunities,” Bonner stated.

The report is being touted as the nation’s most comprehensive maps of broadband availability and Internet speed compiled from data voluntarily supplied by more than 25 Internet service providers doing business in California.

Planning for the telecommunications future in Humboldt County

Although Broadband Task Force members are hopeful the report will provide policymakers with more information than has ever been available before, Humboldt County planners will have to backtrack to incorporate broadband and other dynamic telecommunications
issues into its long-term planning.

During a Humboldt County Planning Commission hearing Thursday on the eve of the report’s release, it was discovered that a report commissioned in 2004 to look specifically at broadband and other telecommunications issues was almost completely omitted from the county’s general plan update process.

Residents, business leaders, technology advocates and elected official representatives who addressed the commission expressed their surprise over the omission of the telecommunications information from the 20-year planning tool for the county.

And nearly all of them expressed their support for a separate chapter of the general plan addressing telecommunications they said was vital to address rapidly changing technologies.

Peter Pennekamp, executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation and the area’s second appointed member of the Broadband Task Force, attended the meeting to support a standalone telecommunications element.

Pennekamp told the commissioners that the report’s strongest recommendations are all about getting Californians connected through necessary uniform policies at the county and municipality level.

“In other words it is a whole set of actions that will remove the barriers to broadband and other telecommunications in rural counties,” Pennekamp said. “Humboldt County is very much at the forefront of this.”

In the next few years, Pennekamp said the amount of information that will be “pushed” through the broadband system is expected to increase more than 1,000 times and that virtually all of the infrastructure being put in place now will already be outdated.

“Having a separate element that people could engage with and gets the correct focus of the county is very important,” Pennekamp said.

Connie Stewart, a liaison to State Assemblymember Patty Berg, offered her assistance and support for a standalone element.

“It is going to be such an important economic development tool,” Stewart said. “It is important that we get policies in place and that we are able to quickly adapt to the infrastructure needs for broadband.”

Kirk Girard, director of the Humboldt County Community Development Services, told the commissioners that the omission of the telecommunications report from the general plan occurred because it wasn’t combined with a consultant’s technical report that formed the
core of the infrastructure element.

But Girard said the county still has the work that was performed and was written more-or-less as a standalone element.

“It is not lost,” Girard said.

Girard said the discussions of how and if a standalone telecommunications chapter might be added to the ongoing general plan update will be brought before the planning commission and possibly the Board of Supervisors in the near future when they discuss possible changes to the general plan’s overall timeline.

For more information on the Task Force report, visit the California Broadband Web site at www.calink.ca.gov/taskforcereport/.