2016 has been a wild ride for us here at Cruzio Internet. It’s been a year of growth and action for us, as we expanded our network to be better than it’s ever been before, and prepared ourselves for one of our most important projects yet. Now that the year is almost over, we wanted to give all of you a look back at the last 12 months at Cruzio, and peek at what lies ahead for 2017.

We announced the beginnings of the Santa Cruz Fiber project

Probably the biggest project on everyone’s minds here is the grand step we’re taking to bring the future of internet to Santa Cruz County: Santa Cruz Fiber. Early this year, we announced the beginning of the project, with the goal of providing affordable, next generation broadband to every home and business in the city of Santa Cruz.

Over the course of the year, we’ve teamed up with a number of different organizations to take the bold step towards a “fiber future” early next year. We announced that the first part of the project will be bringing gigabit speeds to around 1000 homes and businesses in Downtown Santa Cruz, then expanding outward from there. And if YOU want to be a part of bringing gigabit internet to Santa Cruz, you can fill out our survey here!

We made our growing network bigger than ever

It’s been a year of expansion and exciting firsts for our hybrid fiber-wireless broadband network. In July, we launched the first commercially-available gigabit service in Santa Cruz. At 1000 Megabits per second, that’s way, way faster than anything else available! “This has been our goal for the last few years,” said Cruzio’s Director of Technology & Infrastructure, Chris Frost. “We’ve been rapidly deploying the latest in new technology and have been able to get speeds up to this benchmark level quicker than even I hoped.”

A couple of months earlier, in partnership with Siklu and the City of Santa Cruz, we were able to upgrade 15 buildings to gigabit speeds. The Tannery, Loudon Nelson, the Civic Center, City Hall and the Riverwalk Apartments are all among the buildings that  have the fastest internet in Santa Cruz. Along the way, we’ve also added dozens of great local businesses to our network, including Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Somagenics, Fullpower Technologies, and the Watsonville Film Festival.

We got a new sign!

 

Cruzio’s HQ at the old Sentinel Building has been a downtown landmark for years of course. But in September, we became even easier to find with the addition of our shiny, beautiful new silver sign. You may have seen it if you’ve taken a stroll along Cedar Street.

Our Business Broadband service turned out to be faster than we thought

When describing our Business Broadband service earlier this year, we underestimated our own capabilities. We described the service as getting “up to 30 megabits per second” in speed. As it turns out, and as you can see in the graph above, most users are actually getting 50 megabits or more…with a good number getting as much as 90! As we look toward our fiber future, it’s worth remembering that fiber already exists in Santa Cruz through our various other products, including our hybrid wireless-fiber network. We’re already using fiber technology to bring in excellent speeds like these to people throughout Santa Cruz County. Fill out an inquiry here to find out if you’re eligible.

We Fought to Stay Connected during the Loma Fire

On September 26th, disaster struck in the Santa Cruz mountains. As firefighters scrambled to get the Loma Fire under control, back here at Cruzio we were also nervously watching the blaze. At first, we looked on as anyone else would; worrying about the people, pets and animals who might be affected. But as hours passed, the wildfire started approaching an important facility at the top of Loma Prieta where we’ve spent years building infrastructure.

What followed was a saga of late nights, early mornings, and close calls as our excellent technicians worked to keep the power for our equipment on, so they could make sure as few people as possible would see issues with their service. We didn’t completely avoid an outage, but the number of people affected was small and the effect was brief. The real heroes were the firefighters who worked around the clock for weeks at a time to stop the fire, and keep the damage at a minimum. If you want to read about the full saga of Cruzio and the Loma Fire, you can read our comprehensive breakdown (and see more of the incredible pictures from the scene of the fire) right here.

We welcomed a big new team member

Getting up to the top of tall buildings can be a difficult process for our field operations team So, last month we welcomed the newest member of our team: the Cruzio Bucket Truck — otherwise known as Number 88. So if you’ve got a very tall building, expect to see our new truck working hard with our team to make sure you have the fastest possible internet.

We held our 6th annual Open House Extravaganza

As we’ve done every year for the past 5 years, we welcomed thousands of people to our coworking and technology hub to come party with us at Open House Extravaganza 6.0. Our works members showed off their passions and projects, as the Santa Cruz community walked in to drink free beer from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing, eat fantastic food from the Ate3One food truck, and listen to great music from Full Moon Rooster (featuring Cruzio’s own Field Operations Lead, Ariel Carter.) The real stars of the event, however, were our Cruzioworks members, who did a fantastic job showing off the projects they’re doing in our coworking space everyday.

And we’re looking forward to 2017

As we look ahead to 2017, there are even bigger changes coming to both Cruzio, and the Santa Cruz community. Early next year, we will launch our Santa Cruz Fiber initiative in earnest, with the goal of bringing gigabit fiber internet to all of Santa Cruz County. We will begin construction soon. So as we take a look back at everything we’ve done in 2016, we’re looking forward to making 2017 the best year yet!
Happy Holidays, and a Fantastic New Year to you from: Chris, Peggy, Mark, Paul, James, another Chris, Sandi, Ralph, Colin, Adia, Jesus, Alison, Dan, Morgan, Ariel, Justin, Andrew, David, another David, Alex, Brooke, Parker, Ani, Max, Josephine, Iasha, Josh, Laurie, Robert, Alana and Brian;

our fantastic interns & apprentices: Cameron, Rafferty,

and Jake, Annika & Carly (the grown “kids”)