Mind the Digital Gap
In 2020, reasonable internet access meant something different than what it means now, just 4 years later.
Then: Households with speeds slower than 6 megabits per second (mbps) for downloading data from the internet and 1 mbps uploading were considered ‘unserved’ by the state of California. At the time, the state sought grant funding for providers who could install no less than 10 mbps download/1 mbps upload.
Now (notably, post-Covid-19 pandemic): ‘Unserved’ areas are those with speeds of 25 mbps down/3 mbps up. ‘Underserved’ are those with between 25/3 mbps and 100/20 mbps. Providers seeking government grants must provide minimum 100/20 mbps to households.
“What we learned during the pandemic was that we all need internet for so many different things; homeschooling, Zoom meetings,” said Heidi Hill Drum, CEO of the Tahoe Prosperity Center, which serves as lead for increasing internet access and speeds in the Tahoe Basin. “And now we’re much more aware of the need.”
In Truckee/North Tahoe, there are many fronts on which groups are moving to improve broadband capabilities. Most timely is an opportunity for California households to confirm or challenge whether they have useful internet speeds.
The Federal Communications Commission, via state broadband departments, is asking individual homes and businesses to review information presented in the national broadband map, created with data provided by internet service providers.
“They have to get their baseline from somewhere,” said Dieter Wittenberg, assistant chief information officer for Placer County, of the FCC and its map. “And that baseline comes from the providers that serve the area. But those providers aren’t always truthful in what they say because they’re also worried about losing market share. So they go, ‘We cover all of North Tahoe and we’re at 100 megabits or greater speed.’ And then that may not necessarily be reality once that gets out there ’cause they haven’t built services out.”
“It’s a huge problem,” added Kari Sinoff of the Sierra Business Council. Sinoff is the program director for the Gold Country Broadband Consortium, which looks to increase digital access and use of broadband in Nevada, Placer, El Dorado, and Sierra counties. “There’s always an option to go up and correct information, but it’s never been a mandatory process before [the funding] opens.”
The number of determined locations unserved or underserved will result in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) fund distribution, intended to improve broadband speeds in the identified regions. Across the nation, $42.5 billion had been allocated for BEAD funding, $416 million of which is earmarked for Nevada and $1.86 billion for California based on calculations of unserved locations.
“If people truly do disagree with what is being said and posted by the providers to the feds,” Wittenberg continued, “this is their opportunity in 30 days, basically July 8 [to Aug. 6], that they have to go and try to bend that trend.”
Nevada held its BEAD challenge in February and March. After a 30-day rebuttal phase, which ended May 9, the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology is determining the classifications of underserved and unserved locations. Many residences in Incline Village/Crystal Bay, shown as primarily served, have challenged the claim. To view a list of locations with varying service statuses, as well as submitted challenges and rebuttals, visit osit.nv.gov/broadband/bead/#more-info-bead.
Californians can visit register.challenge.cpuc.ca.gov/#data-download through Aug. 6 to participate.
Broadband funding from national and state governments has spiked in recent years. BEAD is one of three broadband funding programs in the Golden State currently administered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). One, the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), is an annual opportunity; the other two, State Bill 156 and the federal BEAD, are one-time buckets. All, however, seek to improve internet connection.
[People] need to go in and verify that they’re being shown unserved or underserved on the map. Because it means money. It means how much money can be funneled into that neighborhood. That’s the whole thing. Because if it’s incorrectly marked, they’re ineligible for funding and they’re never going to get built out.”
~ Kari Sinoff, Sierra Business Council, program director for the Gold Country Broadband Consortium
The Tahoe Prosperity Center’s Connected Tahoe project is a product of CPUC funding and seeks to bring gigabit internet access to the Basin. Currently, staff is focused on improving cell service and supporting affordability and competition in the broadband market.
Tahoe Prosperity maps out Basin pockets of underserved households and invites internet service providers to bring them on board. “We’re company agnostic,” Hill Drum said. “To us, it doesn’t matter as long as the resident has internet service.”
A Tahoe Basin Broadband Feasibility Report was released in 2019 by Tahoe Prosperity, tapping three neighborhoods “in dire need of improved high speed broadband”: Kingswood Estates in Tahoe Vista, Alpine Peaks in Tahoe City, and Rubicon Meeks Bay.
Kingswood Estates is a grouping of about 130 homes located just off Highway 267 and Regency Way. All utilities are underground. About 30 of the residences are occupied full time and up until 2020, there was very minimal cellular coverage.
“It was a serious health and safety issue,” said Vickie Robinson, a Kingswood resident, to Moonshine. “You literally had to leave your dying spouse on the ground, run up to the top of the summit here to get cell coverage to call 9-1-1.”
Internet speeds weren’t much better: 6 mbps down/1 up was technically supposed to have been provided by AT&T DSL service. In reality, by the end of 2018, speeds on average were 1.8 mbps down/0.41 up. The lowest speed showed 0.13 mbps down, according to the Prosperity feasibility report.
“Anything needing higher speeds, like Zoom meetings, was not available to be carried on the old, antiquated underground phone lines in Kingswood West,” Robinson said. “[Voice over Internet Protocol] needs much higher speeds to place calls so even STR safety guidelines could not be met.”
Chuck Dunn, another Kingswood resident, said there had been efforts for years to try and get better service: “We couldn’t get any attention here in the ’90s or early 2000s to bring anything up here.”
Tahoe Prosperity stated in its feasibility study that telecommunications companies were hesitant to expand broadband infrastructure in neighborhoods like Kingswood to the tune of millions because of the challenging environment (steep terrain, tree cover, rocks, extreme weather), long travel times to provide service, and few customers in rural settings.
In 2019, Kingswood residents approached Oasis Broadband, which agreed to set up a radio tower system in the neighborhood. In 2020, connectivity was completed. “Suddenly, we’re part of the 21st century, and that made all the difference in the world,” Robinson said. She noted Oasis speeds range from 120 down/25 up to 200 down/25 up.
Dunn, who’d been driving to Truckee to connect to different businesses’ WiFi for his KTKE Blues Hour with Chuckie Dunn on Tuesdays, could finally work from home. “We just got rid of our landline 6 months ago,” he said, noting that while initially scared to lose that connection, they can now connect their cell phones to WiFi. “All our other neighbors over the past few years have been getting rid of landlines.”
More recently, Charter Spectrum is installing hybrid fiber/coaxial technology in Kingswood, based on a grant from the aforementioned CASF. “Charter received a grant to support construction for just 34 locations; however, we have used our own additional resources to reach more than 100 locations in that area,” shared Dennis Johnson, Charter’s senior director for west and northwest communications. Broadband speeds are expected to range from 300 mbps up and down, to 500 mbps, and up to 1 gigabit per second based on the package purchased.
[The overlap of Oasis and Charter in Kingswood was documented by the CPUC in November 2021 (p. 16 in the document), after Oasis (formerly known as Exwire) asserted a due process error: Exwire claims to have built out to certain eligible areas within the Kingswood Estates project area in 2019 but did not fully complete its wireless system. Those build-outs did not show up on the Interactive Broadband Map, therefore allowing Charter to erroneously move forward with its application for the Kingswood Estates Project area. CPUC staff rejected Oasis’ claims on procedural grounds. However, noted is a dropping in funding to Charter from the PUC — from $2.2 million in 2020 for 50 unserved households to $967,000 in 2021 for 34 unserved households, as 16 homes were, in fact, served — by Oasis.]
Charter’s fiber installation began last summer, and a stumbling block almost immediately cropped up: On the first day of work, the crew hit an in-ground electric cable and blew up a transformer, frying the neighborhood grid.
“The massive electric surge that caused hit every home in the neighborhood, damaging main electric panels, interior electric lines and junction boxes, blowing computer motherboards in home appliances, and opening garage doors,” Robinson recalled.
Placer County requires contractors to take every precaution necessary when locating underground utilities. There’s also the national Call 8-1-1 approach before digging.
“We actually ask [contractors] in many cases to do extra little potholes … and then we’ll ask them to dig little holes to — ‘positively locate’ is the term you’ll hear — to make sure we know where everything is,” said Matt Randall, Placer public works deputy director, of the errors made last summer. “But you can’t spend all your money potholing, otherwise you might as well just dig a trench. So, it ends up there’s some judgment. It’s tricky. I don’t want to make any excuses for anything or anybody either. You do your best and this is the kind of the disruption I’m talking about.”
Charter is on course to complete its installation by this fall, though residents remain frustrated by a lack of communication from the company. Dunn said his household hasn’t been contacted by Charter for connection, and he’s happy about that: “We don’t want them to, there’s no reason to.”
The California BEAD map shows about 35 homes in the Alpine Peaks neighborhood as unserved, while entire neighborhoods in Rubicon Meeks Bay are marked as such. Meanwhile, the Nevada BEAD map, last updated at the end of June, shows Incline Village and Crystal Bay are almost entirely served. View the maps above to see both states’ BEAD maps as of July 2.
Charter isn’t the only provider staking a wider claim in the Truckee/North Tahoe region. There are also AT&T, Comcast, Oasis, and Starlink, to name a few popular ones. There are newer ones making headway, too.
“We just had a demonstration by a company called SkyFiber and Tarana Wireless,” Hill Drum said. “They have service — it’s sort of like line of sight, but the technology is a little different. The speeds with that company, they beat everything we have in terms of internet right now in the Basin. We did a demo with them at Camp Richardson Resort a few weeks back. Their line-of-sight service was all the way across the lake. We were getting speeds over 350 megabytes and over 100 upload. That is a service that we are working to better understand where they can provide better service.”
The BEAD Challenge will be critical to shining an appealing spotlight on those in Truckee/North Tahoe still suffering from slow broadband speeds.
“[People] need to go in and verify that they’re being shown unserved or underserved on the map,” Sinoff said. “Because it means money. It means how much money can be funneled into that neighborhood. That’s the whole thing. Because if it’s incorrectly marked, they’re ineligible for funding and they’re never going to get built out.”
Californians, Are Your Internet Speeds Too Slow?
Individual consumers, visit register.challenge.cpuc.ca.gov/individual-challengers to:
1. Enter your location.
2. Check the broadband availability data reported for your address.
3. If the information listed is incorrect, submit evidence through the website. Your evidence will go to an organization that can submit a challenge to the data on your behalf.
* Note: Currently, satellite service for broadband is not recognized as a reliable option. Thus, locations with satellite broadband could be considered ‘unserved.’
