news story / By Hank Sims

Fiber, Fiber Everywhere

The company’s position is a bit galling, Forslund said, since the county itself leases AT&T some of the right-of-way for the line, which he said is used exclusively for carrying AT&T’s own communications traffic between California and Oregon. The line passes right through the center of downtown Weaverville, Forslund said.

The AT&T officer responsible for government relations along the North Coast could not be reached for comment.

Jonathan Speaker, chief operating officer of the Arcata Internet services company Streamguys, was one of the many local people working on redundancy issues who until earlier this week had no idea that there was an extant and operation Trinity County line. He said that the lack of transparency around these issues — no one seems to possess a precise accounting of where existing fiber optic exist in and around the state — means that it is essential for government to bring more weight to the table in negotiating for access to the utility.

“It appears to me that AT&T doesn’t have a financial incentive to supply us with redundant fiber,” Speaker said. “It’s going to have to be mandated by the state.”

In addition to the Trinity County line, there’s another potential access point for redundant fiber to the county that doesn’t get much notice. Crescent City gets its fiber optic connection from the north, in Oregon. According to Kathy Moxon of the Humboldt Area Foundation, another Humboldt County person deeply involved in the effort to bring a redundant line to the county, our existing fiber optic line now extends as far north as Big Lagoon — only 55 miles from Crescent City, far nearer than even the Trinity County trunk line.

The CENIC map, which shows fiber optic lines “existing and under construction” at the time of its publication, shows several lines extending north along 101 to meet up with lines coming down from the south. For whatever reason, this gap was never breached. In the next couple of weeks, the federal government is set to publish guidelines for new broadband projects that will be funded under the federal stimulus act; to date, the Hwy 299 and 36 routes to the Central Valley are the only ones on the table, despite the apparent alternatives.

But the sudden appearance, to most, of an active fiber optic line on our doorstep last week has many in the community scrambling to figure out what else might be out there. The scene, currently, is a bit chaotic.

On Tuesday, Humboldt County Supervisor Mark Lovelace, whose election platform last year included the promotion of redundant fiber, said Tuesday that he had recently received credible information that there some sort of fiber optic line had already been laid in the Larabee Valley area, near Bridgeville — though who laid it, or for what purpose, he could not say.

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