Humboldt County gets some redundancy

Humboldt County, in the northern part of California, used to be serviced by a fiber cable going past them on Route 101.  In less than a year ending in 2007 they had four outages where all communications to the county was disrupted.

One outage was caused by winds and another by a fire.  The other two were caused by highway construction that dug up the fiber.  The Executive Director of the Redwood Region Economic Development Corporation, Gregg Foster, said that this was why Humboldt County decided to push for a redundant fiber connection.

While they waited from 1999 (when Pacific Bell first promised to install fiber) until September of 2003 to get their first fiber broadband connection, it only took two years to install a redundant fiber backbone that they have just activated.

The California Advanced Services Fund financed 40% of the cost and Access Humboldt was the lead agency that helped drive the installation.  The fiber cable was run along the PG&E electric towers by IP Networks and PG&E.

101 Netlink, a local ISP, is providing fiber broadband connections to the towns along the route of the redundant fiber which brings the first broadband services to these rural towns.

The Executive Director of Access Humboldt, Sean McLaughlin, said in a statement:

“Congratulations to all the folks who’ve worked for many years to advance broadband deployment and adoption in our region – including this effort to secure a redundant fiber optic network connection for Humboldt County. We’re particularly delighted that 101 Netlink, a locally owned broadband network operator, is now offering fully redundant Internet service to their customers, including Access Humboldt. We look forward to other internet service providers connecting to the new PG&E fiber, developed by IP Networks.

“This broadband network deployment was made possible with substantial support from public agencies and forty percent funding from California’s telecom ratepayers. The new fiber connection is an important part of the overall broadband infrastructure needed to bring the Redwood Coast into the Information Age.”

County officials believe that the redundancy should attract new businesses and improve the local economy.

Do you think the broadband redundancy and rural expansion will help improve the crops in Humboldt County?