John, a Cruzio staffer, took this photo of an actual customer site.

First, be assured that if you haven’t been contacted, you are not affected by the end of these services.

If you are a subscriber to the small number of affected connections, we’ve already sent you email and snail mail letting you know there are only a few months of service left. We’re helping people find alternatives. We’re comping free email service. We’re sometimes sharing a few tears!

What’s happened is that we’re in a race. Cruzio needs to build our own infrastructure around the county to provide service to our community before AT&T decommissions the copper phone lines our older services use.

We’ve been part of an effort to force telephone companies to maintain their lines longer than they wish, and we’ve had some success, though we’ve lost money on the services for years. But some of the longest, oldest infrastructure has been failing. And, reluctantly, service on those lines has deteriorated so badly we will have to let a small number of our accounts go.

More details:

When we build our independent network, we build a solid foundation for the future. Our fiber and fixed wireless services are fast, reliable, and scalable. We’re very proud of our work.

In the past, all our customers were on lines leased from AT&T, built back when telephone companies were granted state monopolies in return for universal service and price regulation. We still have a lot of customers on leased lines where the service is reasonably good.

But in some parts of the county, on our oldest services (which we call DSL 1.5, or DSL 3.0, or DSL 6.0) we have seen a decline in line quality that, since we don’t own the wires, we can’t repair. Some customers lose service for weeks or even months before AT&T even sends a technician to look at their lines. We get distressed calls from our customers, and call AT&T in turn again and again, to no avail. It’s AT&T ‘s plan to drop those lines as soon as they’re allowed. We’ve already been warned that end-of-life on the leased network may come as early as this year. And they’re letting the lines deteriorate in the meantime.

We could no longer charge for such crummy service.

And, though we’re building as fast as we can, some of the places where the copper was deteriorating aren’t yet reachable by our newer network.

We emailed a small number of customers, some of them longtime customers, that their service would be discontinued. And it broke our hearts to do it.

Of course, when some parts of our network are discontinued, other people may hear rumors and think, “is that me, too?” Rest assured that if your service was being retired, you would get months of warning (we sent out emails in February for service cancels in June, and are following up with postal mail and phone calls for good measure).

Cruzio lost this race, and it was a tough loss. But we hope someday to reach every part of the county again. We’re building our independent network out rapidly, building 20 new Points of Presence (PoPs) around the county so far this year alone, each node serving up to hundreds of customers. We’re working hard to serve our county.

Many of us spent a lot more time with our pets than ever before. We shared our funny photos with our colleagues on a company Slack.

New dog in the house! Not coming out.

Bath day sucks

Lana sparkles in her cone. What a trooper!

Georgie was looking casual in the laundry basket, so a friend went into Photoshop and…

Georgie’s attitude is much more appropriate in a sports car

“There’s a small intruder in my house and he keeps insisting he’s Toby Jones.”
Who’s Toby Jones?

This highly respected British actor. Or a puppy. Hard to tell them apart.

This happens to everybody who has a cat, doesn’t it? You want to get up, but…

There is a dog here somewhere

These are not taken on the same day. Murray and the blankets are a constant.

And finally, another celebrity look-alike pet, this one is…

Mother Theresa!

Cruzio has been working with the Pajaro Valley Unified School District for months to get reliable, fast internet to all the students who need it. We’ve been installing high speed broadband at their homes since springtime and have connected about 50 families so far.

And we love these students. They’ve been in online classes for weeks now and they’ve been telling us how much it means to have a good connection.

Here’s who they are and what they have to say! We’re hoping they stay in touch so we can see where they are years from now. We suspect we’re looking a the future leaders of our county — maybe a mayor or a county supervisor in the bunch.

First, a couple of middle schoolers made videos and they’re fantastic. Karyna even translated her statement into Spanish after she speaking with impressive poise in English. As Cruzio’s Sales and Marketing Manager, Jesus Lopez, put it: “I’m not crying, you’re crying.”

We’re also enjoying some photos and quotes from other bright kids:

This is a fantastic family from Freedom: Mom and Dad Johnna and Daniel, and son Isaiah.

“It was difficult at first for me to do my school work because I had no Internet connection.  Now that we have it with Cruzio, I am able to communicate with my teacher all the time and do my school work.  I no longer have glitches when I am participating in class.”

— Isaiah, Freedom Elementary Student

“When Distance Learning began, we had no Internet and we needed it.  Being connected was extremely necessary and Cruzio provided the opportunity so my son could participate in classes. “

— Father: Daniel 

Another awesome family. We’ve been so impressed with the efforts of both parents and kids to keep up with schoolwork in the pandemic. How about this fantastic trio:

“It has been great having constant access to the Internet! I can hear my teachers clearly and there is no lagging in my connection.”

— EA Hall Student, Lesly

“Para mi este servicio fue muy bueno porque no tenia Internet en casa y me dieron la oportunidad de tenerlo en casa gratis durante tres meses. Cruzio instalo la antena y proporciono el cable totalmente gratis y ahora pago $14.99 al mes.”

— Elizabeth , Lesly’s mom

Translation- “For me, this service was great because I did not have internet access at home and they gave me the opportunity to have it free for three months. Cruzio installed the antenna and cable totally free and now I pay only $14.99 per month.”

Looks like Mahia enjoys our foggy coastal weather…  Another great kid with lots of promise.

“Having Internet helped go to school and participate in the classes I’m in. I am able to do my homework and I don’t need to go out to look for free Internet. I was a bit scared when I had to park to get Internet to do my class work.”

— Mahia, Aptos Jr High student

“Para mi, un bill era un gasto más pero los hotspots no siempre funcionan.  Busque opciones de Internet de bajo costo pero no encontraba.  Mi hija y yo usabamos el Internet público en la biblioteca de la ciudad o en algún otro lugar donde hubiera Internet gratis y nos quedabamos en el carro para que hiciera sus trabajos escolares.  El gerente de Cruzio, quien hablaba español –  algo muy importante para mí, nos ayudó muchísimo y pudimos conectarnos al Internet en casa a un costo más aceptable para mí después de recibirlo gratis por tres meses.”

— Mother: Rosario

Translation- For me, another bill was one more expense, and our mobile hotspots didn’t always work well. I looked around for low-cost Internet options but could not find any. My daughter and I used the public internet in the city library or any other place where there was free internet and we stayed in the car until she was able to complete her school work. Cruzio’s manager, who spoke Spanish – which is something very important to me, helped us a lot and we were able to connect to the internet at home at a reasonable cost after receiving it free for three months

By the way, the Cruzio manager Mahia’s mother refers to is Jesus Lopez, who worked tirelessly to make sure all the families were well-informed and comfortable with getting internet installed in their homes.

It’s been hard getting Jesus to stop calling every single family, but now our field ops and front desk staffers Carlos Serna and Antonio Guizar Orosco have been helping, too. Thanks, Carlos and Tony!

How are things in Santa Cruz? Thanks for asking.

The ongoing COVID health crisis was augmented two weeks ago by extremely hot weather that kicked off sudden county-wide power blackouts.

While we were coping with the unusual heat, and worrying about whether more blackouts would come, Santa Cruz County had a pre-dawn lightning storm of terrific force on August 16th. Hundreds of lightning strikes dotted our county, from over the bay to our inland forested mountains. It was beautiful and scary.

We were, it turned out, right to be scared because the lightning set off a number of fires deep in wooded areas. The fires quickly spread in the hot, dry weather and 77,000 people were evacuated as tens of thousands of square acres burned out of control over the next couple of days.

The lightning storms hadn’t just hit Santa Cruz County. The rest of California suffered, too. Fires were started up and down the state — over 600 wildfires in all. It was impossible to address so many fires at once. The state’s resources were stretched thin. As the fires spread, residents were forced to leave their homes.

Evacuees included several Cruzio staffers, and hundreds of our customers. And it appears that some members of the Cruzio community lost their homes.

Those of us who remained in the unevacuated parts of Santa Cruz breathed air full of ash particles, and our homes smelled like smoke. Friends and family from the mountains are still sleeping on our couches, and we have our go-bags ready in case the wind takes a bad turn and we all have to — as the official notices put it — “get out.”

Through all this, we’ve still had to maintain social-distancing, mask-wearing, and generally care due to the pandemic.

So that’s how this month is going.

At Cruzio, we’re constantly reminded, during difficult times, how vital internet service is. Times of crisis raise the need. We had to anticipate damage from the fire and figure out how to prevent damage to our infrastructure. We knew people needed to pore over fire maps and get notices via email.

This means that all Cruzio staff were on alert this week, some losing days of sleep as we monitored and reacted to searing heat, power outages, and fire. Our staff lives here — as do our customers — and we’re fiercely dedicated to successful and safe outcomes for our community. We may suffer glitches and partial outages when the situation becomes overwhelming, but we are not complacent. We fight tooth and nail to keep our services running.

We don’t have to look far for inspiration. The firefighters battling this new and impossible complex of blazes are our heroes and we’re doing whatever we can to help them, as well as people who’ve gone to local shelters, and all those working in the systems which have to kick into place at times like these. Cruzio’s backbone connections are supporting the Santa Cruz Civic and Watsonville Fairgrounds evacuation sites. We’ve provided cameras for fire watch sites. We’ve reached out to government offices all over the county: what can Cruzio do to help?

Meanwhile we’re supporting our staff as best we can. We won’t put them in perilous situations. We try to help those who’ve been evacuated from their homes. Cruzio is focused on keeping internet running, which is a big job, while understanding that we, too, are humans who need a place to sleep.

As the days tick by, Cruzio is ready to help. A team like ours is part of a strong, resilient community, and we are working with organizations around the county to maintain communication services and help people find answers and find each other.  We put our staff’s names at the bottom of every newsletter — we’re proud of their work, especially now, especially this month.

Stay safe, Santa Cruz. Stay strong, it’s up to us to get our neighbors through this tough time.

Cruzio’s team roams Santa Cruz County, putting up and maintaining communications infrastructure. We’re often in high places: on rooftops or mountain peaks, and we had great views of the thing that’s been hovering above us for the last several days: the smoke-filled sky.

Cruzio has a lot of talented photographers on staff, and they posted photos of what they were seeing.

What Started the Fires

A lightning storm before dawn on Sunday, August 16th. Santa Cruz almost never gets lightning, but that night was wild. The storm was accompanied by little or no rain.

From a weather app, Sunday, August 16th, 4:26 am.

From Above

From high up where some of Cruzio’s facilities are located, we can see big changes occurring when the wind shifts and fire kicks up. First a trail of smoke rises, then the hills are laid over with creeping grey, and then, sometimes, the wind changes and skies are blue again.

Monday mountaintop:

View from Loma Prieta, Monday August 17th, 2020. Photo by John Beardwood.

Wednesday mountaintop:

View from Loma Prieta, Monday August 17th, 2020. Photo by John Beardwood.

View from Loma Prieta Mountain, Weds August 19th. Photo by Cameron Kennedy.

View from Loma Prieta Mountain, Weds August 19th. Photo by Cameron Kennedy.

Friday mountaintop:

Looking towards Gilroy Friday, August 19th, 2020. Alison Lowenthal.

Looking towards Gilroy Friday, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Alison Lowenthal.

Note: the skies were blue on Friday, but that’s because the wind was favorable to that particular mountaintop that morning. Conditions are still shifting, and blue skies often give way to overhead smoke.

 

Around Santa Cruz County

When Cruzio staff are driving around town, it’s been almost eerie. As Field Operations staffer Sonya says “I said it before and I’ll say it again, It looks like an apocalypse movie.”

In the last week, the sky has gone from grey-yellow to various shades of orange, with occasional spots of blue peering through. The sun? A glowering red circle.

When the sky was orange

 

West Side Santa Cruz Weds, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Sonya Campbell.

 

On a roof. West Side Santa Cruz Weds, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Sonya Campbell.

Laurel Street, Santa Cruz, Wednesday, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Hans Morales.

East Side Santa Cruz, Wednesday, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Mark Hanford.

 

Monterey Bay from West Cliff Drive, Weds, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Peggy Dolgenos.

 

“Mood,” Wednesday, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Jason Smidt.

 

877 Cedar Street, Thursday, August 20th, 2020. Photo by Evan Powers.

 

When the sky was grey

 

Rooftop, Santa Cruz, Thursday August 20th, 2020. Photo by Cameron Kennedy.

First photo, Capitola, Friday August 21st, 2020. Photo by Evan Powers.

Five minutes later, much worse. Capitola, Friday August 21st, 2020. Photo by Evan Powers.

Air quality on Friday, August 21st, 2020. Photo by Jason Smidt.

 

Our Trucks in Many Places

Our staff has traveled all around the county and up into the Bay Area when necessary to maintain and repair equipment. Cruzio staff have uploaded some photos of our heroic trucks looking out over a smoke- and fire-colored landscape.

Cruzio’s truck on Loma Prieta, Weds, August 19th, 2020. Photo by Cameron Kennedy.

Cruzio truck on Bay Street, Thursday, August 20th, 2020. Photo by Sonya Campbell.

 

Why Communications Can Sometimes be Difficult

And here’s a picture from a security camera on a communications tower in Bonny Doon, as the tower was engulfed by fire and destroyed.

We all need to do our part in making the world a better place. And Cruzio’s part centers around the internet. That’s why we’re joining many other companies to halt all paid advertising on Facebook for the month of July, in a campaign tagged #StopHateforProfit.

Facebook has been allowing people to publish hate speech, inaccuracies, and doctored videos. They’re not unique in that, but the impact is greatest on Facebook and there’s been little effective response from the company. As an early internet provider, Cruzio feels responsible when things go wrong online. We can’t control the internet, but we can try to make it a healthier, more equitable place.

Cruzio urges all our users to be thoughtful when they publish online. We don’t think everyone who works for Facebook or posts on Facebook is culpable, and the platform has many benefits. By joining a boycott, we hope to move their corporate policies in the right direction.

It never fails: every crisis brings out the scammers.

What Cruzio, as an ISP,  particularly wants to warn you about is the email scammers, who send “phishing” email. They pretend to be your bank, your ISP, your neighbor. They pretend they’re collecting money for charity — which people are more inclined to give in troubled times. They prey on your most shameful secrets and your greediest dreams of undeserved wealth.

When there’s something on your mind, like the fact that you can’t leave your home and go about your normal life, you’re a little more susceptible. Older people, especially, may be home alone and less clued into the vast possibilities of digital deception.

So be on guard, and help your family and friends.

What We’re Seeing

Lately, Cruzio has seen some pretty convincing fakes supposedly coming from… us! The scammers scoop up a Cruzio graphic and pop it atop a serious-sounding message telling you to type your password and personal information into a website.

Don’t.

Don’t type it in unless you’re sure. If you’re not sure the message is from us (or your bank, or your insurance company — even more frequent targets), don’t download files or visit websites. Don’t answer if someone says they have evidence that you looked at a porn site. If they seem to know a password, change it on the real site, not by clicking a link in the email.

(By the way, personal information including passwords has been harvested in various hacking incidents affecting institutions and businesses like the Veteran’s Administration, Target, Equifax, etc. To see if your information is available to scammers on the internet, check haveibeenpwned.com.)

And if an email sounds dire, remember that the more urgent the email sounds, the more likely it’s a scam.

Be especially suspicious of any email that says you need to “verify” your account by typing in information the company should already have or which they shouldn’t need, like your social security number.

Cruzio Gets Phony Sites Down Quickly

For our part, Cruzio is on the lookout, Most phishing schemes are caught before they even get to customers’ mailboxes. Scams that do get through are escalated quickly and our specialized team takes action immediately to report and disable the link. Crooks love to operate on holidays and weekends, so our pager team — who’s on call 24/7 — has been extra busy foiling phishermen during the pandemic.

Because we act quickly to foil the phishing, even if you click on a link, the scammer’s site has almost always been disabled. The longer you wait, the better the chance the scheme’s been axed.

If we think a lot of people have received the phishing email, we put a message on our voice mail (831 459-6301).

Phony Websites Hide on Infected Computers

What websites harbor these devious plots? Generally the host sites themselves are not criminal ones. They’re innocent victims who’ve been fooled by a similar phishing scheme in the past. The scammers crowbar in and put some web pages deep into their otherwise legit website. Once informed, webmasters shut access to those pages down — very quickly.

So often you’ll see, say, a fake Wells Fargo page deep inside a suburban nail salon website. The small business doesn’t even know it’s there, and will remove it as soon as they’re alerted.

More Information

Because the internet is, unfortunately, rife with misinformation and scams, we’ve written a number of blogs over the years to help customers recognize and respond to spam. Some are linked below.

And the Federal Trade Commission maintains a blog where online privacy and security scams are listed.

James, who is Cruzio’s Director of Operations and Business Development, apparently likes cats. He has three real ones and a number of artistic renderings.

When he sent a cute photo of his cat Molly to a company message board, we noticed more felines in the photo than just Molly. There are many cats in this photo. It took us a while to find them all!

How many cats do you see? After you’ve given it your best shot, check for the answer below.

How many cats are in the photo?

Drag your cursor over the white text below to highlight the answer:

We count eight!:

1/ Molly, the real cat
2/ Red cat figure behind her
3/ Creepy bronze cat peeping out from behind laptop
4/ Gold statue cat # 1 on shelf
5/ Gold statue cat # 2 on shelf
6/ Cruzio kitty on sticker on world’s finest electric pencil sharpener (it’s the sharpener against which other sharpeners are measured. It said so on the box.)
7/ Cruzio kitty on laptop screen on Slack
8/ Name on spine of film encyclopedia: Ephraim KATZ (ooooooh!)