Russ Steele
The Sierra County Business and Economic Committee held a workshop on bring broadband and eCommerce to Sierra County, which I was the co-facilitator with Ron Heming from Truckee. Details here. We were fortunate to have Jeff Newman, who supports the Governors Broadband Task Force from his staff position at the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency give the key note presentation. Jeff and I worked on the ERC’s eCommerce and Business ReLocator program in Nevada County. While I shared lessons learned by the ERC’s Telecommunications Resource Committee in seeking more broadband and developing eCommerce, Jeff emphasized the need for regional cooperation and local collaboration in seeking broadband solutions.
While some Sierra County communities have some limited access to satellite and wireless broadband services, there are many clusters of unserved citizens who want access to this 21st Century business tool. With the lumber industry gone, and only a small tourism industry and historical cattle business to generate revenue, the folks in Sierra County are looking for ways to being more revenue and wealth to the County. One strategy is to generate more eCommerce through access to broadband Internet. The question is how, with only a little over 3,200 people in the whole county, spread over large areas, the major telecommunications providers are just not interested in investing in the required infrastructure.
Satellite providers and wireless providers presented their existing services and the challenges of getting access to the Internet through AT&T T-1 Services, which are not currently available in many communities, requiring wireless back haul networks to access points. As one might expect, the wireless providers and potential providers are under capitalized, which is slowing rollout of wireless broadband in Sierra County. The two main obstacles to broadband access are lack of funds and lack of Internet backbone access via AT&T T-1s or T-3s. I heard similar complaints from rural counties at the Economic Working Group, Governors Broadband Task Force meeting on the 17th in Sacramento. It is going to take a major initiative by the Governor to overcome these issues, lets hope he acts boldly this fall when Task Force reports and makes recommendations.
One of the highlights for me was a DVD presentation by Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat, of his speech at the National Governors Conference, and it is worth watching. I have read Friedman’s book, but did not sense the same level of passion for the impact of global collaboration that comes across in Friedman’s speech. I will try to get a copy of the DVD for a future ERC Board Meeting, and if possible make clips available for down loading on the Broadband of Brothers blog.
Ellen joined me, and the best part of our trip was Sierra County’s hospitality, which was just super. We were treated to dinner by Committee Chairperson Pam Payen, plus Nadine and Tom Norton let us let us park our trailer in the Sierra Valley Lodge parking lot, and hook up to their power. We really enjoyed our visit to Sierra County. For more details on the Lodge click here.
Ellen and I can highly recommend the food at the Lodge’s Bear Paw Dinning Room. It is only a two hour drive from Nevada City to a really beautiful part of the state, the worlds largest alpine valley. You can go up I-80 to SR-89 to Calpine. Then return to Nevada City via SR-49, which is a beautiful drive, making it a great day trip in the Sierra.
On Sunday we surveyed two UNITED STATES HISTORICAL CLIMATOLOGY NETWORK stations at Quincy and Susanville, taking pictures and investigating the station history. We will report on our discouraging findings in a future post on each site. We also have a report in the works on the Colfax station.