Opportunities expand with broadband

“To provide a positive, meaningful, educational experience for our students. For HSU to be bold, innovative, and entrepreneurial. To become a model global community. And, to embrace our Hispanic Serving Institution and Minority Serving Institution status with integrity and purpose.”

— Dr. Tom Jackson, HSU

President. A group of broadband-loving people that includes economic developers; tribal, city and county leaders; and HSU have been meeting weekly to make sure improvements to telecommunications services are well coordinated. There’s real progress being made on several projects that aim to improve our region’s technology infrastructure and we need to be ready to prosper and embrace the opportunities they provide.

A project that HSU is enthusiastically supporting is the proposed “Project Echo” subsea cable landing, which will connect Humboldt County directly to Singapore and Jakarta. It is in its final permitting phase and if all goes well, it will be completed by the end of 2022. This project is connected to the datacenter in Arcata, which is currently being constructed.

Making permitting easier will help make it more attractive for companies to invest in us.

Arcata recently adopted a “dig once” policy to ease permitting and construction for undergrounding utilities and broadband services. The city of Eureka and Humboldt County have also pledged to consider adopting similar policies.

Also, work is progressing on the Digital 299 Project, which will install broadband between Eureka and Redding, benefiting remote communities along the way. Vero Fiber Networks has stepped up to design and build the Digital 299 Project and is hoping to put shovels in the ground before the end of the year if all the permits are received. The region has been working with a variety of companies to get a fiber optic line across Highway 299 for almost 15 years, but it looks as if it is finally going to happen soon. A big thank you to Assemblymember Jim Wood who has been incredibly helpful on this project and the subsea cable project.

And congratulations to the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa tribes for moving forward to build and enhance tribally owned and operated broadband systems. The Resighini Rancheria just received funding to study whether they too can create their own tribally-owned system. All of