Tag Archives: community

An Update on Equal Access Santa Cruz

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girl on laptop
Jason Borgen, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Santa Cruz Office of Education, faced a heartbreaking challenge in April 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had forced students to switch to homeschooling, and many of them lacked adequate home internet connectivity. Students couldn’t do their schoolwork.

“Our primary objective is to provide unwavering support to all students and families, ensuring they have the necessary resources and tools to achieve success, particularly those in our community who are underserved,” Jason emphasized.

Having partnered with Cruzio on many projects over the years, Jason’s initial action was to reach out to us. Together, we embarked on a mission to install affordable internet connections for these students. When it became apparent that the problem was even more widespread than initially thought, Susan True of the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County stepped in, playing a pivotal role in establishing a charitable fund, thus giving birth to Equal Access Santa Cruz (EASC).

EASC allows local community members to support less fortunate neighbors with fast, reliable internet — a service that’s become vital for so many reasons. Cruzio members can even add a few dollars to their monthly bill for EASC. In all the fund has raised over $1,000,000, all of which is put to work building new internet connections to homes in places where construction couldn’t be justified by market economics.

Since its inception, EASC has achieved remarkable success. Some of our achievements include:

  • Establishing over 35 broadband distribution hubs (Points of Presence or PoPs), each capable of serving up to 200 households.
  • Executing various special projects to assist community members in need, such as Buena Vista migrant housing, Pajaro Valley Shelter Services, Farm Discovery Center, and Housing Matters’ Casa Azul.
  • Connecting over 1,200 students and families to new internet access.
  • Creating infrastructure that has the potential to serve an additional 5,000+ individuals.
  • Enhancing broadband availability in over 60% of the Watsonville/Pajaro area.
  • Cultivating new partnerships with several school districts, Housing Matters, Housing Authority of Santa Cruz, and other like-minded organizations.

The partnership with Equal Access has been one of the most gratifying things the Cruzio team have ever undertaken. It embodies our core values and mission as well as the Santa Cruz community’s dedication to making a positive impact.

A student at Farm Discovery Center near Watsonville enjoys Equal Access high-speed internet

We extended internet to Farm Discovery and other places where students do homework.


Jason encapsulates our collective mission when he says, “we focus on equity and are doing everything we can to remove the digital divide from Santa Cruz County. We are thankful for the work Cruzio is doing and has done to make this a reality. With Santa Cruz COE’s and Cruzio’s shared vision towards this work we can truly make a difference for all of Santa Cruz county!”

If you want to help support our mission and help make sure no one in Santa Cruz County is unconnected, please donate to the Equal Access fund.

Housing Matters’ Casa Azul: Equal Access Santa Cruz’s Latest Success Story

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801 River St/ Casa Azul

Casa Azul Grand Opening

People who’ve fallen on hard times can use the internet to connect to health and other services, to look for jobs and permanent housing, to stay in touch with family, and, hopefully, to help find their way back to stability. Through our 34-year history, Cruzio has provided internet connections to organizations that help the members of our community who are most in need, and as we build new infrastructure we extend it to needy folks when we can.

Most recently, Cruzio was proud to link up new supportive housing on River Street, near the intersection of Highways 1 and 9.

Leveraging state funds from the Home Key program as well as resources from local donors, Housing Matters renovated a long-empty VIctorian house and is using it to provide housing to people who suffer from one or more disabilities and who’ve experienced homelessness for a year or more. The house is close to Housing Matters facilities, creating a much-needed expansion of the campus.

The Casa Azul project consists of two one-bedroom apartments and five studio units, making it a stepping stone towards Housing Matters’ upcoming project, the Harvey West Studios. The latter is a 120-unit permanent supportive housing initiative aimed at providing long-term support to individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. As Casa Azul opens its doors to new residents, there’s a real sense of excitement and progress. Housing Matters and Cruzio intend to replicate the free internet deployment at the new project.

The provision of free internet access at Casa Azul goes beyond merely providing a connection; it represents a gateway to empowerment and opportunity for residents. With reliable and high-speed internet, individuals experiencing chronic homelessness can access crucial online resources, educational opportunities, job training, and employment opportunities.

Evan_801River

Cruzio tech Evan Powers admires the new Casa Azul project at 801 River St.

Moreover, telehealth services will be readily available, ensuring access to remote medical and mental healthcare, fostering improved overall well-being. The ability to stay connected with family, friends, and support networks through online platforms enhances social connectivity and helps build a stronger sense of community within Casa Azul.

The partnership demonstrates a truly impactful approach to tackling the digital divide. As residents move into Casa Azul, they are welcomed not only into safe and stable housing but also into a digitally connected world of opportunities and possibilities.

We feel proud to be able to contribute. Equal Access is a partnership of Cruzio, local community institutions, and local philanthropists. It’s supported by many of our customers (thank you!) and other local donors who know how important quality internet is to every person. It’s part of treating people with dignity.

Every time we can contribute to the well-being of our community, we are going to try. Each piece may be small, and sometimes we feel pretty overwhelmed by the difficulty of curing our local problems. But the only way to tackle big problems is to take the first steps. This housing meets a deep and obvious need. We hope it will prove helpful.

You can help! Make a donation to the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County Equal Access fund. Or just add a small amount to your monthly Cruzio bill, and we will send it to the fund. Equal Access helps seniors and disabled people access health and social services, children get a better shot at online schoolwork, people looking for jobs find opportunities, and much more. Because we add our own contribution, Cruzio can make a small amount of money go a long way.

Cruzio Wins Grants to Build Internet

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San Jerardo migrant farmworker community gets broadband connections
You may have heard the Cruzio Internet recently won grants to build high-speed broadband to low income communities in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. This is the result of a determined, long-term effort by Cruzio and our partners — educators and philanthropists — to get internet where it’s most needed.

Funding for internet infrastructure has been lacking for many years

Solving the digital divide is complicated. You can’t deliver internet without a physical network, which is expensive and time-consuming to build. Parts of Cruzio’s service area are rural or low income, and free market forces just haven’t compelled construction to those places.

Several years ago, Cruzio turned our frustration with the digital divide into energy towards a solution. We set up our Equal Access program to build long-needed infrastructure.

We looked at public funding for internet, But till now, government programs promising better internet have generally been waylaid by big corporate ISPs. The programs just dumped money into existing networks (cough! shareholders’s pockets), perhaps helping to pay a family’s bills in the short term but doing nothing to improve available connectivity.

To the contrary: often, public funds helped sustain the status quo, not improve it.

The digital gap was widening

Due to a lack of investment, large parts of our region have been limited to infrastructure that can only carry 6 megabits per second, while cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where there’s a lot of competition from independent ISPs, often have access to gigabit or even multi-gigabit connections. That means an urban internet user in a prosperous neighborhood often has access to a connection that is dozens of times better than a low-income or rural user. Sometimes over a hundred times better. And the divide is growing.

Cruzio looked for a way to actually build to unserved areas, and what we could not find in public funding we found in community partnerships.

Local philanthropists stepped in

Because schoolchildren are one of the most important groups to be served by internet — they need it to keep up with classwork — from the beginning we found common ground with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and other educators around our service area. Together we worked on establishing better internet opportunities for low income families.

We applied for grants, but at first there wasn’t much money available. We’re lucky that our local community took notice. The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County connected us to needed funds. Private donations from Driscolls, the Watsonville Rotary, and some anonymous contributors joined our own contributions to put hundreds of families online, and will for years to come.

Cruzio members, always the best sorts of people in our unbiased opinion, have also been contributing. We love it when you pay a little extra on your monthly bill as a donation. Here’s how to sign up to support internet for a student who needs it.

Lately, government funding has become available

Private donations were, and will always be, vital to support internet equity. But finally, government money is available and our Equal Access program, already in full swing, has been able to win two grants — one from Santa Cruz County and one from Monterey County.

Because we are experienced network builders and know our area so well, we were able to present compelling proposals for fast, economical improvements in internet availability. And we’re quickly fulfilling our promises.. The ink was barely dry on the Santa Cruz County grant when we set up the first three new hubs in the Watsonville area. Four more are in the works right now, in Live Oak. And we are surveying for more in other parts of the county. People really need better internet right now, so we will use up the funds very quickly!

Cruzio’s putting all those funds to work

We’re working right now on four sites in northern Monterey County which should be operational this summer.  Each site serves dozens of buildings, sometimes translating to hundreds of people. As in Santa Cruz, all those folks will have access to our standard quality internet (which is quite good internet) at $15/mo.

Many thanks to Santa Cruz County Supervisors Koenig, Coonerty, Friend, and McPherson, and to the Monterey County IT Department — especially Alex Zheng and Eric Chatham — and Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, thanks Freny Cooper! We’ll do you all proud.

More details about this project in this Santa Cruz Local article.

Operation Cupcake

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Cruzio Internet has recently embarked on our community’s most ambitious communication project in over half a century — ever since cable companies with monopoly franchise agreements installed coaxial copper cables. Who’d ever have expected cupcakes to be part of the process?

Cupcakes from Buttercup Cakes. How's that related to internet?

We’re building Santa Cruz Fiber. This project will bring unprecedented internet speeds at low prices to downtown Santa Cruz. As with any ambitious project, there have been a few hiccups.

Building Fiber is “Boring”

Cruzio chose a minimally invasive method of construction: underground directional boring.

This method requires only small, occasional openings in the street. A drill then bores a narrow tunnel underground for as much as thousands of feet before re-emerging to pull conduit and fiber optic cables through.

It’s very important to watch for existing underground infrastructure while drilling, and several methods are used: all utilities mark their assets with bright spray paint; small round potholes are dug near the markings for visual confirmation; and a monitor attached to the drill head itself sends video to the operators standing above.

But Occasionally There’s a Surprise

Drilling is done slowly and carefully, with the monitor constantly checked.

We’ve encountered the usual problems: pouring rain for a couple of days, forcing us to leave up our parking signs longer than expected. Some of the buildings we’d like to extend fiber to didn’t get us permission in a timely manner (there’s still time, downtowners, sign up now!). And most seriously, three weeks after the start of construction, at nearly closing time one day, our drill hit a water pipe that had an odd, unmarked bend.

Our construction engineers were watching carefully. They saw the problem right away, but the older pipes tear easily and damage was done. We immediately shut down our drilling, notified the Water Department, and set about making repairs. Kudos to the City of Santa Cruz and to MP Construction, our contractors, for their quick action. Everyone worked together and capped the damage, prevented much water from escaping, and got the street back in working order that night.

That’s right: that night. The crew stayed at work till the job was done at about 4 am.

We’re not happy with mistakes. But we’re happy with the way our team deals with them.

Now for the Internet-Cupcake Connection:

We’ve set out traffic cones and sawhorses, slowing things down and causing some disruption in the neighborhood. So Cruzio has arranged with our local provider of excellent cupcakes, Buttercup Cakes, to provide a free cupcake to every affected household.

We feel that in the long run, our world-class (and inexpensive) internet will make up for the temporary inconvenience. But for someone feeling a bit peeved today, a cupcake might just hit the (sweet) spot.

No matter where you live in Santa Cruz County, we’d love to serve you. Sign up for fiber or fiber-backed internet, go to SantaCruzFiber.com.

Congratulations to Cruzio’s Chris Frost, The New President of CISPA

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Chris Frost, President of CISPA

We’re proud to announce that Chris Frost, our long-time Director of Technology and Infrastructure, has been named the new President of the California Internet Solution Provider Association (CISPA).  

CISPA is actually the largest state ISP association in the entire country.  It was formed to give a unified voice to independent internet service providers like us throughout the state, and includes members from ISPs throughout California. As the new President, Frost says he’s hoping to unify these companies even further with the goal of creating an open, and secure internet for everyone in the state.

“We’re looking forward to a strong year for CISPA,” Frost says, “We’ll be growing the organization, and building even stronger ISPs throughout California.”

“Cruzio is very proud of Chris Frost, an acknowledged expert and mentor to other internet providers,” says our CEO Peggy Dolgenos. “This position gives him an opportunity to champion the causes of internet privacy, competition, and net neutrality.”

During his tenure as President, Frost says he plans on growing and strengthening the organization even further. So we wanted to send out a big congratulations to Chris Frost, best of luck at your new position!

 

Wanted: Santa Cruz Fiber Champions

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Wanted_FiberChamps

Do you have a passion for lightning-fast internet? Do you like the idea of watching your favorite YouTube videos in crystal clear HD? Or, how does getting that massive file to your coworkers in a matter of seconds instead of hours sound? If this has you saying: “Golly gee, how can I be a part of making this a reality for everyone in Santa Cruz?” Then we want your help!

We’re looking for enthusiastic internet lovers like yourself to become part of our Fiber Champions Team.  Santa Cruz Fiber is going to be building out our gigabit-fast fiber network block by block, and we need your help to spread the word.

Our next meeting of the Fiber Champions is happening this Tuesday (tomorrow) starting at 6pm at Cruzio’s building downtown (newcomers welcome!). We’ll have an overview of the project, followed by a discussion about how we can spread the word about this amazing service to as many people as possible. And, of course, there will be pizza and beer to sweeten the deal.

If you want to become a fiber champion, or even if you are just a little fiber-curious, please come join us! You can RSVP through our Facebook page so we know how much pizza and beer to bring. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!