A registered Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC), Cruzio has a significant market share (about 9,000 households and businesses in Santa Cruz County) and a long history of reliability and responsiveness to customers.
Founded in 1989, Cruzio is one of the largest independent internet service providers in California, and recently introduced heretofore unavailable enterprise-level internet services to Santa Cruz County, representing a huge investment in the Santa Cruz community. Cruzio is entrusted with providing internet and technology services for more than 2,000 local businesses, including notable organizations like:
- Granite Construction
- Santa Cruz Public Libraries
- Community TV
- Ecology Action
- Santa Cruz Nutritionals
- Fox Racing Shox
- Pacific Collegiate School
- Santa Cruz Seaside Company
- The Cities of Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Capitola
- The Santa Cruz Warriors
With an eye to promoting our city as a technology hub, Cruzio currently operates more than 40 free wifi hotspots in Santa Cruz County, including Louden Nelson Community Center, Beach Flats Community Center, Plaza Vigil in Watsonville, and many local cafés and restaurants.
100% locally owned and staffed, Cruzio has on-site technical support, local roving IT, and a welcoming storefront in Santa Cruz where members can drop by any time to pay a bill or get advice from our technical staff. Cruzio is known for its friendly, hands-on customer service that caters to its diverse client population, from residents and local nonprofits to small and large businesses throughout Santa Cruz County.
Cruzio believes in the importance of community, being a business role model in Santa Cruz County, being eco-friendly and providing good wages for our employees. Cruzio offers competitive prices, provides services in Spanish and English, and donates services to dozens of local nonprofit and government organizations. We would like to see Santa Cruz County as a leader for technology and entrepreneurism and we believe an increased internet infrastructure is vital to that aim.
Cruzio continues to expand its services and grow the company to fit the needs of businesses and residents throughout Santa Cruz County. Cruzio’s commitment to the local community ensures individual services that best meet the needs of its diverse customer base.
Cruzio’s Network
In 2009, Cruzio lit up 10 gigabits of fiber transport between our LEED-certified facility at 877 Cedar Street and the Level 3 internet gateway in Sunnyvale. Connectivity to the internet is provided by Level 3 and Cogent. A high-speed/high-bandwidth wireless link connects the Cruzio 877 Cedar facility with the Equinix San Jose facility via Mount Umunhum to provide a wireless failover to the fiber in event of a fiber outage.
Cruzio maintains a backbone of wireless points of presence (POP) on various mountain tops overlooking the Monterey Bay, South San Francisco Bay, and Silicon Valley Regions. Cruzio wireless POPs are present on Mount Umunhum, Mount Allison, Loma Prieta and Black Mountain to name a few. Cruzio wireless POPs are fed from the Equinix San Jose facility. At Equinix, Cruzio is cross connected into a peering exchange to an aggregate of content providers which include Google, YouTube and several others.
Our mountaintop locations are protected by generator backup power that is permanently installed on some locations and is ready to deploy from our central location as needed for others. All of our mountaintop locations are also protected by on-site industrial grade UPS battery backups that are designed to provide power until a generator comes online in the case of permanent installed generators, or can be deployed by our emergency response crews in the case of sites where a permanent generator is either not permitted or not feasible. Our data center is protected by an 80 kilowatt UPS system and a 150 kilowatt generator.
Cruzio is currently building a high-speed fiber-wireless hybrid network which is independent of large national companies, such as AT&T and Comcast, who have not provided adequate service in the past. We have enormous excess fiber capacity in downtown Santa Cruz and we’re using it to deliver extremely high speed (100 Mbps – gigabit) wireless internet to nearby facilities, such as the Santa Cruz Library and the Warriors arena. We also currently serve the West Side and Watsonville with similar high speeds. These services are extremely popular; we are signing up five to ten new businesses every month.
Cruzioworks Coworking
The communications hub of Santa Cruz is Cruzio Internet, and the center of Cruzio’s network is a beautiful renovated headquarters.
Located downtown near every possible convenience (restaurants, shopping, transportation), Cruzioworks is a coworking and colocation facility where people create and collaborate at breathtaking internet speeds.
With flexible work spaces, spacious private offices, on-site coffee bar and several conference and class rooms, Cruzioworks offers everything connected entrepreneurs, artists and remote workers need to be productive and happy.
In addition, the soaring windows and beautiful mid-century modern design create a wonderful spot for gatherings of up to 300 people. Perfect for high-tech events, community gatherings and showcases of local talent.
Cruzioworks connects directly to Silicon Valley via 10 Gigabits of fiberoptic internet. Connectivity previously available only on a limited basis, at extremely high prices, through large telecommunications companies, is the norm at Cruzioworks. Free wifi is available at 100 Mbps — quite simply the fastest internet available anywhere in Santa Cruz County.
With our state-of-the-art on-site data center, Santa Cruz technologists now have access to colocation facilities for the first time. Fully redundant connectivity, power and air conditioning at reasonable prices means your data and your people can now stay on this side of the hill.
The most important part of Cruzioworks is our members. We’re home to businesses as diverse as illustrators and lawyers, 3D print shops and local journalists, game designers and solar experts. The opportunities to network are almost infinite and the wide variety of skills and experience give the advantages of working for a large corporation, with the freedom of working from home.
A Brief History
Way back in the late 1980’s (eons in tech years), only people doing research at a university or for the military had access to things like email or message boards. A small but growing number of nascent techies believed there should be a public access alternative and through their efforts many small access providers came into being. Included among them was Cruzio Internet, co-founded by Peggy Dolgenos and Chris Neklason who continue to own and operate the company today.
After getting a business license in 1989, Chris and Peggy started working on a BBS style (text-only) front end for the various Unix network tools, which comprised the pre-web internet of those days. In 1991, the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee (not Al Gore). In 1994, the release of Mosaic, the first graphical browser, caused use of the Web to skyrocket. Cruzio’s customer base started to take off and by the end of 1994 the owners quit their day jobs to work full time at Cruzio and operations moved from their garage to downtown Santa Cruz.
As the internet grew, so did Cruzio, and today, Cruzio serves over 9,000 businesses and homes. Serving the citizens of Santa Cruz County continues to be a real pleasure. We’re grateful to our members for voting Cruzio Best Internet Service Provider and Best Website for several years straight in the Santa Cruz Weekly and Good Times reader polls.
