Once a year Cruzioworks opens its doors to the community, showcasing local art, food, beer, and wine free to all visitors. We call it the Open House Extravaganza since all our coworkers can join in — it’s a big, big party with multiple hosts.

2018’s 8th annual party went swimmingly, and we say that because the theme was “Under the Sea.”

We introduced our new fiber optic mascot, the Fiberopticpus, beautifully depicted by our ultra-talented graphics artist Ani Bilgutay. We’d planned to just use it for this party, but it’s so great we’re going to keep Fiberopticpuses around in our future ads and decorations.

Octopuses were everywhere: dangling from the ceiling along with fish and shells. And there was a giant inflatable whale. The music system played “Under the Sea” and “Octopus’s Garden” — among other tunes so as not to go overboard.

This year we invited folks to try a trivia game. Families and groups of friends gathered at tables, working on the questions, which were (purposely) incredibly hard. No one got 100%!

Want to try the quiz? Test Yourself: Cruzio’s Fiberopticpus Trivia Quiz.

Pictures of the party below. We can’t wait till next year, our 30th Anniversary!

Visitors enjoying art and working on the trivia quiz

Coworking champs Jolokia displayed a giant Lite Bright

First place prize in the trivia contest was a giant inflatable whale!

The trivia winners: first and second place, with the whale

Here at Cruzio, in our community by Monterey Bay where we’ve been installing high-speed broadband, we’re very much interested in both octopuses and fiber optics. We adopted the Fiberopticpus, above, as our fiber mascot.

And we created this trivia quiz for our eighth annual Open House Extravaganza. Missed the party? Test your knowledge at home, see how you score! Answer key follows the questions.

Cruzio’s Fiberopticpus Trivia Quiz!

Questions about Fiber:

1. What color(s) are the fibers in a fiberoptic cable

• 1. orange
  2. blue
  3. all the colors of the rainbow
  4. no color/clear

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

2. Data is transmitted over fiber by lasers.

What does the acronym LASER stand for?

1. 1. light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
   2. luminous asynchronicity enunciated by rays
   3. light-activated silicate-emitted radiowaves
   4. laparoscopic simulated energy rendition

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

3. How do you join two strands of fiber together?

1. 1. sewing
   2. tying
   3. stapling
   4. fusing

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

4. Fiberoptic technology has hugely increased the speed of the internet, which is measured in amounts per second. What comes next? Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte…

1. 1. Ketabyte
   2. Metrobyte
   3. Exabyte
   4. Omegabyte

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

5. Rain makes fiberoptic data:

1. 1. go faster
   2. go slower
   3. revert to non-binary format
   4. it has no effect

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

6. Fiberoptic cables are made of glass. That means installers have to worry about:

1. 1. mesmeric forces
   2. bending cables too sharply
   3. electromagnetism
   4. overheating

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

7. Which of these did *not* use fiber optic technology in some form?

1. 1. China’s Zhou Dynasty
   2. the Ancient Romans
   3. Alexander Graham Bell
   4. NORAD

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

Octopus Questions:

1.  An octopus has 8 limbs. How many legs does an octopus have?

1. 1. 8
   2. 10
   3. 2
   4. 6

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

2.  How big is the largest known octopus?

1. 1. 20 pounds
   2. 50 pounds
   3. 500 pounds
   4. 1,000 pounds

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

3. What’s the typical lifespan of an octopus?

1. 1. 1 to 2 years
   2. 30 to 50 years
   3. Often about 100 years
   4. Up to 300 years

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

4. Do octopuses, like sea stars, regenerate?

1. 1. No
   2. If they lose a limb it grows back, but they can’t grow more than that
   3. If a leg is removed a new octopus will grow from it
   4. An new octopus is only regenerated if the removed part contains heart tissue

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

5. Octopuses can change color to precisely match their environment with chromatophores, or pigment cells, in their skin. Translated into a graphics program format, how many dots per inch (dpi) does the skin appear to have?

1. 1. 15 dpi
   2. 72 dpi
   3. 300 dpi
   4. 1200 dpi

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

6. The brain of the octopus is wrapped around its

1. 1. esophagus
   2. left eyeball
   3. spine
   4. heart

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

7. How many species of octopus have scientists identified?

1. 1. 300
   2. 1
   3. 50
   4. we have no idea

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

8. What do octopuses have more of?

1. 1. eyes
   2. mouths
   3. hearts
   4. they have the same number of all of these

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

9. “Octo,” means eight. What bout “pus,” what does that refer to?

1. 1. crus, meaning leg
   2. pus, meaning venom or corrupt matter
   3. pusus, meaning little boy
   4. ped, meaning foot

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

10. What’s a normal human hobby that octopuses also seem to enjoy?

1. 1. watching television
   2. playing darts
   3. braiding their hair
   4. gardening

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

11. What do octopuses do to disorient their predators?

1. 1. stare hypnotically into the predator’s eyes
   2. spin their tentacles rapidly to create a whirlpool
   3. expose their fearsome claws and teeth
   4. shoot out blinding clouds of ink

Answer: ____________________________________________________________________________________

For bonus points, draw your own Fiberopticpus below!

ANSWERS:

414342132124*113444

*or higher!

Future Motion choose Siklu’s EtherHaul 8010FX to provide 10Gbps speeds in downtown Santa Cruz

Future Motion is a high-tech startup based in Santa Cruz, California, a beach town just a short drive from the heart of Silicon Valley. Future Motion makes the Onewheel, an innovative powered board that is ridden like a skateboard but with one wheel and a suite of technology “bridging recreation and transportation.”

With the university, the boardwalk, world-class surf and a thriving creative culture, Santa Cruz is far from your typical small town. But until recently it did have one thing in common with a lot of communities of its size – it lagged a generation behind its larger neighbors in access to high-speed connectivity. Regional and national fiber and DSL providers don’t see a huge opportunity in Santa Cruz and as a result are slow to deploy, leaving gigabit access a hit or miss proposition for not just residents but business entities.

Many times this situation results in a young up-and-coming company being forced to relocate to a more densely populated area where gigabit connections are available at affordable prices. Hence the founders and much of the culture that the company was based on are uprooted and transported, all in search of affordable high-speed internet access.

Future Motion was in this exact situation – their success seemed to be driving them away from their roots resulting in the city losing not only a burgeoning tax base but the innovation and creativity that started Future Motion in the first place. Searching for a way to remain in Santa Cruz, Future Motion reached out to Cruzio, a local and award-winning independent ISP who was already leveraging mmWave wireless systems from Siklu to bring multi-gigabit access to the city. Future Motion had a fiber feed to their existing building, with an EtherHaul™ 1200 series serving as a 1Gbps wireless redundant link.

The business was booming, Future Motion was adding staff and had outgrown their initial facility and need to move in order to expand. Their choices were to stay in the middle of town where fiber might be available, and pay the extra rent or relocate to Silicon Valley.

Enter Cruzio and Siklu with a wide array of multi-gigabit mmWave solutions available. Freed from the constraints of incumbent telcos and fiber plants Future Motion was able expand the search to larger, cheaper outlying facilities still in Santa Cruz. Working closely with Cruzio, Future Motion were able to identify a new location and verify they would be able to connect at speeds up to 10Gbps using Siklu’s EtherHaul™ 8010FX to their POP in downtown Santa Cruz.

With access secured and the new facility identified Future Motion was able to stay in Santa Cruz, keeping the culture that started the company and providing a roadmap to other startups on how to blend high tech needs with a small town quality of life.

Cruzio, with mmWave as part of their offerings, have been able to expand rapidly throughout the county with less risk and at a faster pace. Before spending the money to lease or extend a fiber connection, Cruzio brings up to 10Gbps to a locale via Siklu. Over time as the demand grows the business case for a fiber link may be justified – but only once the customers are already there, greatly reducing risk.

“With Siklu’s mmWave solutions we have been able to grow our network organically, and deliver in days the multi-Gigabit connections Santa Cruz demands,” says Chris Frost, Director of Infrastructure & Technology at Cruzio, and avid OneWheel rider. “We fully plan to leverage this model and expand to other communities with similar needs, and Siklu will be our mmWave solution.”

This blog was originally posted on Siklu’s website:

Siklu delivers multi-gigabit wireless fiber connectivity in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Operating in the mmWave bands, Siklu’s wireless solutions are used by leading service providers and system integrators to provide 5G Gigabit Wireless Access services. In addition, Siklu solutions are ideal for Smart City projects requiring extra capacity such as video security, WiFi backhaul, and municipal network connectivity all over one network. Thousands of SIKLU carrier-grade systems are delivering interference-free performance worldwide. Easily installed on street-fixtures or rooftops, these radios have been proven to be the ideal solution for networks requiring fast and simple deployment of secure, wireless fiber. www.siklu.com.

Our first all-fiber neighborhood is complete in downtown Santa Cruz and we’re busily lighting up the first homes and businesses with scorching Gigabit Fiber Internet. It’s been a long and challenging construction project but it’s done, and now downtown Santa Cruz has a broadband infrastructure asset in place that will fuel creativity and growth for decades to come.

We’ve been super-stoked by all the positive feedback we’ve received from businesses and residents. It’s been really gratifying to hear how many local businesses and residents realize the value of competitive, Net Neutral, truly superior broadband to their homes and businesses, and see the long-term positive effect this new infrastructure is going to have on our downtown.

We’re on the lookout for neighborhoods who need better broadband – let us know!”

The City of Santa Cruz has been a helpful partner too, utilizing their own “dig once” policies to join the project and connecting several key City-owned sites. We love thinking big and we’re ready to revisit the city-wide partnership, or some other big project any time. If you think the City of Santa Cruz should prioritize broadband, let them know!

So what’s next? Well, a lot more network growth, a lot more broadband deployment and more and more gigabit speeds. Even as we’ve been building the downtown fiber, we’ve been expanding our fiber-wireless coverage in new areas and offering new 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps connections. We’ve already boosted and bolstered our fiber-backed network on the Westside, in Live Oak and in Watsonville, adding more and more redundancy and reliability and hooking up several big buildings and businesses to crazy-fast direct fiber.

More Gigabit Neighborhoods to Come!

Once we’ve hooked up the early adopters in the downtown neighborhood and we’re comfortable we’re seeing a successful business model, we’ll start looking for our next fiber ‘hood — which could be a residential neighborhood, an apartment complex or HOA, or another awesome mobile home park like trendsetting El Rio.

The best news is, new technology that’s emerging means we’ll be able to offer more and more gigabit service in an ever-expanding area. Where fiber makes sense, we’ll build fiber; where fiber-backed wireless makes more sense, we’ll use that technology. We’ve worked with businesses to link their separate facilities, city and county governments to bring free wifi to public places. We’re growing steadily and we’re also on the lookout for neighborhoods who need better broadband — so let us know!

We base our decisions on a simple question: what is best for our customers? To us, what makes sense is to use the best-of-breed technologies to connect as many people as we possibly can to the best possible broadband. Every Cruzio customer, whether fiber, wireless or Velocity, coworking or colo, helps build our network around the County. That’s the Cruzio way.

Cruzio’s building a world-class independent, Net Neutral network as fast as we can.

One thing that’s helped us is the law (the Telecommunications Act of 1996) that’s given companies like Cruzio the right to lease phone lines from AT&T while we construct our own. After all, the phone and cable companies had a head start on us with publicly enforced monopoly contracts while they built.

To level the playing field, the law says independent ISPs can rent the copper that goes to homes and offices. That’s how Cruzio delivers Velocity and DSL. In some areas, Cruzio’s Velocity speeds are great. In other areas, it’s the only service people can get.

We’re building fiber fast, but in the meantime copper is helping us survive and helping customers have an independent choice.

Now the phone company’s pushing to end customer choice on their lines — the lines customers are paying for. They say independent ISPs don’t need access to the copper lines and central offices any more. AT&T wants to start by raising our rental rates sky high and then, if they’re allowed, cutting us off and removing lines altogether when and where they choose.

That hurt Cruzio and other independent ISPs in communities all over the country. It would weaken and even kill already-scarce ISP competition. And without competition in an unregulated market, prices rise and service quality falls.

So on your way to the fight for Net Neutrality (which is going pretty well in California, thanks to public action), please take a moment and let the FCC know you’re opposed to their proposed change — it’s called “forbearance.” Visit savecompetition.com to register your views.

“You won’t ever need another connection because this one is so good.”

Construction’s Done!

At Cruzio, August 30th was Fiber Day. It’s the day we lit up the first customer in our first all-fiber neighborhood.

Fiber Day capped the first, we hope, of Cruzio’s many Santa Cruz Fiber neighborhood projects. Our first neighborhood covers most of downtown Santa Cruz.

Fiber — that means fast internet. The fastest internet. At $49.95 per month. Unprecedented. (By the way, are you in neighborhood 1? Then by all means, sign up now!)

Construction isn’t easy or cheap, but we had to build. There just isn’t good infrastructure available, so Cruzio took the plunge (into the earth, literally) and constructed an underground fiber network to every house, every office building, and every apartment complex in the area [see map].

This was a huge, multi-million dollar local investment by a small local company. No public dollars or grants were used. Eyes wide open: for future builds, we know that we can’t reach every part of the county without outside investment. We’ll need partners, and for the next expansion we’ll be looking for partners who are willing to go along with our principles — especially Net Neutrality and privacy for our customers.

In the meantime, we continue to expand our fiber in smaller increments. If you’re not in the first neighborhood, and you’re interested in fiber speeds, we’d love to hear from you.

What Will Gigabit Speeds Mean to You?

Now that construction’s complete, we can offer connections to the fastest network you could imagine. The interior cables are made of spun glass, which means that data travels at the speed of light. Fiber optics are safer (they don’t get hot, they’re not “live”) and use far less energy than older cable and phone lines. The network is overbuilt, meaning we’ve got pretty much unlimited capacity for any internet anyone wants for the next several decades.

Yup, decades. You won’t ever need another connection because this one is so good.

Any of These Interest You? AI,AR/VR/XR, HD, 4K, 5K, 3D

We want everyone in the county to have what we’ve had for many years at our building: scorching Gigabit internet — so much internet that it takes mere seconds to download a Netflix movie or upload your home video of a cat trying to sneak past a Great Dane.

Gaming, telecommuting, publishing, backing up data. AI, AR/VR/XR, HD, 4K, 5K, 3D. Symmetric downloads and uploads. All of these, and whatever crazy internet activities lie ahead, become a snap with a Santa Cruz Fiber connection.

And it’s local. And Net Neutral. And Cruzio respects your privacy.

Is Cruzio Competitive? Why, Yes

Now it’s time to make the first project a commercial success so we can build more. Our business plan shows we need to connect at least 33% of the people who live and work in the area in order to go forward with our next phase.

To make sure we get that level of market share, we’re “making an offer you can’t refuse.” Live or work downtown? We’ll give you a better connection than you can get anywhere else — a gigabit per second for $49.95/mo. That’s a price lower than what our competitors charge for way slower services.

Not to mention, again, the Net Neutrality and privacy Cruzio stands behind. That’s important to you and important to us. Plus we’re local and known for our customer service. We’re hoping you’ll subscribe and tell all your neighbors, too.

So join our network, help us get to more of the county and be rewarded with great, inexpensive internet at a low price. Just sign up here.

“Our Trailer park is right past the edge of your map,” she told us. “Can you extend the build over to us?”

El Rio Mobile Home Park, nestled by the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, has a lot of stories to tell. And now it has one more: the fastest internet of any mobile home park in the country. Working with Cruzio Internet, residents of this cool park can now get scorching Gigabit internet for only $50 per month. It’s one of the first Santa Cruz Fiber neighborhoods.

El Rio was founded as a fishing resort in the early 20th century, when salmon ran abundantly in the river. Newspaper clippings, nearly a century old, are in frames on the walls of its community center. There’s a proud history here.

Walking through the park, cars drive by only occasionally and the posted speeds are slow… and slower. As you walk in front of the single- and double-wides, park residents nod “hello” in a friendly way, especially if you’re wearing a Cruzio hat. They’re ecstatic about the new fiber internet. They know they’re special. But it wasn’t just luck — they asked for, and worked for, a better internet choice.

It took many months to get from planning to building to lighting the new Gigabit Fiber Internet, but the first customer watched her speed jump by a factor of 100 on the very first day. That person is also largely responsible for the park getting the network. Her name is Hilary Hamm, and she’s a Fiber Champion.

Cruzio Called for Champions

Early in our planning, we put out a call for neighborhood “champions” — people who wanted to get fiber to their street and were willing to talk to neighbors about it.

We were working on a big project: building fiber to every home and business in the City of Santa Cruz as a start and moving on from there. (Ultimately, Cruzio would like to cover the whole county with high-speed fiber and fiber-backed internet — that’s always been the goal.) That ambitious plan was slowed down as we decided to start with a single neighborhood pilot project.

Our first all-fiber neighborhood is the area around our data center and coworking facility. That’s a diverse, well-populated area in downtown Santa Cruz and a pretty ambitious project — we received no grants and no government funding. We met regularly with our Champions, presenting them with our maps and plans as we created them. And one champion had a comment.

Hilary Understood What Fiber Could Mean For Her Community

“Our trailer park is right past the edge of your map,” she told us. “Can you extend the build to cover us?”

We’ll certainly consider it, we said. But she’d need to get it approved, since the park is privately owned and managed by its residents.

Hilary and our team explained the possibilities to the park’s Board of Directors (she’s on the Board herself), and they approved. Because the neighborhood was so close to our build, and because her neighbors were enthusiastic — many of them already Cruzio customers — we did as she suggested. We increased our project just enough to cover the whole park.

What did we offer? Hilary let her neighbors know about Cruzio’s deal, which is what every other customer in the fiber neighborhood gets:

-Cruzio built fiber to every home in the mobile home park
-No charge for construction, no setup fees for customers
-Gigabit-per-second speeds for only $49.95/mo
-No obligation. No charges at all unless our service is purchased
-No contracts. No data caps. No throttling
-Net Neutral, open internet
-Unlike major carriers, we don’t collect and sell customers’ private information

Now we’re seeing those scorching speeds inside the mobile homes. Residents are going to be able to do everything a high-powered tech worker can do at a desk in downtown San Francisco or LA. But they can do it sitting in their home.

That’s So Santa Cruz

It’s a pretty Santa Cruz-y thing to light up a neighborhood of regular folks first, before getting to the larger businesses. We believe the internet’s for everybody and we’re proud to make it happen for this friendly community.

We believe El Rio is now the best-connected trailer park in the country!

Thanks Hilary! You’re a true Champion.

If you think your neighborhood needs better internet and would like to talk to us about being a Fiber Champion, please get in touch! We’re waiting to hear from you.

Cruzio’s spent many months and millions of dollars building fiber infrastructure under the streets of downtown Santa Cruz.

This is Santa Cruz Fiber’s first fiber-to-the-premises project, and we’ve supplemented by serving a much wider part of the County with fiber-fed fixed wireless connections — extending that fiber’s effect far and wide.

Fundamentally, we’re moving from a dependence on old copper infrastructure to brand new connections which will provide much higher data rates — higher and higher for decades to come. And we’re getting these services to as many people as we can as fast as we can.

We feel it’s a great investment for us and our community.

There’s still another big step before every location in the fiber area is “lit up” and getting the hyper-fast service. After the construction finishes up in the next few weeks, Cruzio needs to finalize and test the brand-new cables and connect them to our data center. Then we’ll “drop” the connections from our street fiber vaults directly to the homes and offices who’ve ordered service.

So we’ll be contacting people who’ve signed up for fiber in the next few months. We’re expecting to be all finished in October, with many locations served in the interim months.

That means now is a great time to sign up for fiber if you haven’t yet. Contact us and let us know you want it.

“Price/speed for downtown fiber and certified buildings: $49.95/mo, 1 gigabit (1,000 megeabits) per second”

There’s still another big step before every location in the fiber area is “lit up” and getting the hyper-fast service. After the construction finishes up in the next few weeks, Cruzio needs to finalize and test the brand-new cables and connect it to our data center. Then we will “drop” the connections from our street fiber vaults directly to the homes and offices who’ve ordered service.

So we’ll be contacting people who’ve signed up for fiber in the next few months. We’re expecting to be finished in October.

That means now is a great time to sign up for fiber if you haven’t yet. Contact us and let us know you want it.

After the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality last December, Congress missed its chance to block the change. On June 11th, the repeal became official.

So at the federal level, Net Neutrality is done. Gone. Like a dead parrot, it is no more.

But there’s still hope for Net Neutrality. California could do it.

As we know, California is a big, powerful state. A California Net Neutrality law would have a lot of weight. Some state representatives recently offered two separate bills to establish a California version of Net Neutrality. And not to brag, but our own State Senator, Bill Monning, was a co-sponsor on the stronger of the two bills! Yay Bill. Next, the bills were combined. We had high hopes. And then…

What Happened to the Net Neutrality Bill?

Corporate lobbyists for AT&T, who just won several battles on the federal level, didn’t sit idly while California deliberated. The bill supporting Net Neutrality — which is extremely popular — was nonetheless edited late at night, in committee, in a hurry.

Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), who’s received $29,000 in campaign contributions from large ISPs this election cycle and doubtless expects more to come, led the process, and didn’t allow debate. The bill was watered down so much that its author, Scott Wiener of San Francisco, disassociated himself from it.

             “This committee has turned the bill into one that doesn’t protect net neutrality,” said Wiener.

Read more about the “tense Assembly committee meeting” here.

What’s next? There will be another Assembly committee — Privacy and Consumer Protection — meeting on the bill soon. Will California wake up and protect Net Neutrality? Or will state representatives continue to cave to pressure from some of the biggest companies in the country — AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Spectrum? Follow the gritty details on Steve Blum’s blog at TellusVenture.com.

Again, the best step we can take right now is to let our state representatives know it’s important. Our local reps are on the right side, but it’s easy for politicians to let things slide if we don’t express our views.

To protect Net Neutrality, write to:
Governor Jerry Brown
Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom
Assembly Member Mark Stone
Assembly Member Anna Caballero
State Senator Bill Monning

And maybe send Assembly Member Miguel Santiago a nasty note.

We did it!  We upgraded our email system.

Cruzio’s staff all pitched in to help customers update settings. What’s it like at Cruzio when we’re all focused on a single project? It looks like this:

A lot of people stopped by with laptops, phones, even desktop computers. A lot of people got help. Everyone remained calm and cheerful. Good work team!

If you use a Cruzio-supplied email address (see the list on our FAQ) you just saw a big improvement in service. Larger mailbox capacity, bigger per-message sizes, more robust system, better spam filters.

And Cruzio’s email system still upholds our values: we don’t harvest your personal information and sell it like most providers.

It was a big job, and there’s still work remaining. Out of over 7,000 email boxes upgraded, we expect some people haven’t yet updated their settings, and we are here to assist. Check our FAQ for some common answers and don’t hesitate to contact us if you need help!

Kudos to Our Lovely Staff

Upgrading such an important service for such a large number of people took a lot of planning, and our endlessly talented project manager Adia Schamber did an amazing job. So did indomitable Chief Systems Engineer Mark Hanford, who led the work on the engineering, making sure that nothing was lost and everything was doubly backed up.

So many of our lovely staff worked extra hard to make sure every email customer was updated as quickly as possible. It’s impossible to name each and every staff member individually (check the bottom of the newsletter for their names!), but we know our customers appreciate them. We got many compliments in the mail, on Yelp, etc. — and we always love compliments. Thanks, everyone, for recognizing our efforts, and enjoy the improved service!