NC Media Watch

Broadband Advances in Nevada Coounty with Fiber Optic Backbone

Russ Steele

Nevada County Connected has the news at Nevada County Connected - Your Source for Broadband News.

Starting today, Nevada County Connected will begin reporting more regularly on the advances of broadband Internet access in Nevada County, in particular the western area. Two years have passed since the buzz begin about Federal stimulus funding for Internet infrastructure projects. Nevada County is on a trajectory toward much faster service for more businesses and residences.

This is good new for economic development in Nevada County. Broadband access is key to developing information techologies that will be come the must have products of tomorrow.   When you see John Paul and Chip Carmen of Spiral Studios on the street, or in a local coffee shop, take a moment and thank them for the thousands of hours they have invested in bring more broaband to Nevada County.

Compared to what? (Updated 10-31-10)

Russ Steele

Every time I read statements like this from the Sierra Foothill Report, I have to ask compared to what? 

The Internet is changing the media landscape. This blog broke last month’s record for traffic four days ago and continues to grow every month. We are in unchartered territory.

I have to agree that the Internet is changing the media landscape, and I congratulate Jeff Pelline on his growth. For the last month SFR traffic is up 400%, and for three months SFR traffic is up 100%, according to Alexa, the Web Information Company.  It appears that both of our blog sites are growing and gaining more readership. NCMW traffic is down 3% for the last month, but up 710% for the three month period.  It is hard to sustain such rapid growth.

We are both members of Sac Connect and have gained traffic from that association, according to Alexa.  NCMW Sacramento ranking is 4,589  and SFR is 6,632. The Lower the number the higher the rank. NCMW is ranked 28,651 in the US and SFR is ranked 234,721.  Again,the highest rank would be #1.

The growth in the Number of Blogs in Nevada County, each with a growing audience, is certainly changing the media landscape.  Stay Tuned! 

Update #1: (10-31-10, 19:00)  Here are the stats from StatCounter my third party tracking service:

Update #2 (10-31-10, 19:45) Check this out NC Media Watch vs The Union

 

Face Book Posts on bungie jumping - I did not send it!

Russ Steele

All, if you get a Face Book Message from me, I did not send it. Please do not open and erase the message.

The Tea Party Effect

Russ Steele

This morning Jeff Pelline who writes at the Sierra Foothill Report has an interesting discussion of the impact of local blogs on the media landscape. His stats show a growing audience for his blog, which he contributes in part to being a member of the Sac Bee Sacramento Connect.  While I have many philosophical disagreement with Mr Pelline, which started way back when he was the editor of our local news paper, he has changed the media landscape in the community and is congratulated on his success. 

This blog is also a member of Sacramento Connect, but I have not seen an significant increase in traffic as a result, although Alexa indicated I have been attracting more readers from the Sacramento region.  As you can see from the graphic below, my traffic picked up significantly when I started posting on Tea Party Issues. (Click for a larger impage)


One of the major traffic drivers was this post: http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2010/08/could-this-be-a-tea-party-theme-song.html



I am fortunate that many readers came for the music and have continued to return for the commentary. I want to thank those readers for their continued support.  As you might guess, I will continue to focus on Tea Party issues and issues important to Nevada County from a conservative viewpoint.

Stop the blame game and take a deeper look at the problem

Russ Steele

The Nevada County Connected broadband project was not in the final round of ARRA Broadband Stimulus funding accoring to Gil Mathew, ERC CEO.  Now the blame game starts. Jeff Pelline is blaming Congressman Tom McClintock for the loss. Details here.  Others think it was because of the Central Valley Next-Generation Broadband Infrastructure Project came through Nevada County. However, it was only going to the County building, it was not going to cover areas proposed by Nevada County Connected.

As I stated several times at ERC Board Meetings, the most likely reason for the project not being approved would be it competed with the big guys on the block, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.  They do not like competition and have teams of lawyers to lobby government agencies, and when the ARRA Broadband was announced they made a decision to take any of the funds and lawyered up, sending teams to Washington DC to make sure they did not get gored by some lowly wireless start up. 

SmarterBroadband was successful because they focused on unserved areas of the County and they applied for the ARRA funding under a different program, which had a different selection criteria. 

For a number of years I was the Co-Chair of the ERC Telecommunications Resource Committee. We applied for and received a number of California Department of Trade and Commerce grants to study broadband in Nevada County and increase commercial use of the Internet. The ERC Telcom Committee met several times with AT&T (They were SBC at the time.) in 2000 and 2001 to discuss broadband expansion in Nevada County.  

Our market analysis identified Penn Valley as a high demand area, and the Telcom Committee gave SBC (Now AT&T) a copy of our study and asked when they might expand their SDL service to Penn Valley. In 2001 they told the Committee it was not even on their planning horizon until after 2005.

The ERC gave a copy of a the marketing study to small wireless company who put together a plan to service the Penn Valley area starting in Lake Wildwood and expanding our ward.  With in months after the wireless company applying for permits to raise the antenna on the Club House, AT&T put a remote terminal in Penn Valley.  They wanted to cut off any possibility of future competition from wireless providers.

AT&T did the same thing in Woodland when a wireless company tried to service the community using a California Trade and Commerce grant.  AT&T cherry picked two key neighborhoods in Woodland and quickly installed a DSL remote terminal cutting the economic legs off the start up wireless company that had received the Trade and Commerce Agency grant to build the system.

When the California Public Utilities Commission asked AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to identify there service areas so they could id the unserved areas for the ARRA grant process, they in essence gave the PUC a verbal middle finger, refusing to give any information on broadband served areas.  Without knowing the service areas the grant writers had to guess where the unserved areas were.  Under the ARRA selection criteria there were no service area over laps allow. All that the big boys lawyers had to do was show that Nevada County Connected overlaps some of their coverage areas and that was enough to disqualify the project.

What now!  The ERC Board now has a decision to make, which should produce a live discussion at the next board meeting on the 7th of October. Are they willing to go back to the California PUC and ask for 40% funding, and then raise the other 60% and continue as planned? Other boadband peojects have taken that route. Another option is to do some more market analysis and find the really unserved areas, reducing the scope of the project to focus only on area not served by AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Again, applying to the PUC for 40% funding and raise the remainder locally. The ERC Board recognizes that homes without broadband puts Nevada County schools and business at a disadvantage with Counties that have full coverage.

That should give AT&T some ingestion and may even spur them to expand DSL service in to these unserved area to prevent any future competition. It worked in Penn Valley!

Stay tuned. I will report on the next ERC Board Meeting results. Mr Pelline might want to attend and get the full story, so he can stop balming Tom McClintock for all our economic troubles.

Palin launches grassroots campaign site for commonsense conservatives

Russ Steele

Check out this grassroots effort by Sarah Palin to help commonsense conservative get elected this election year at Organize4Palin

The site lists all the candidates that Plain has endorsed and how you can get in touch with the individual campaigns to support their election efforts. Here is the Link to Star Parker running for Congress in California and Carly Fiorina for Senator in California.

Governor Palin has asked us to get behind these candidates. It's up to us to "make November happen" so choose a candidate today, and be sure to submit what you've done through pictures, video, and blog posts.

The site also provides links to PalinTV which has the video clips of Pailin's speeches and interviews, both TV and Radio.  

Administration Update: This is now a moderated blog(updated)

Russ Steele

To reduce the number of comments that are not relevant to the subject of the post, I am going to moderate the comments for a while. You may experience some delays in posting.  However, with improving cellphone technology I am able to moderate this blog while mobile over most of the US.  My apology for the delay, but I need to clean up the swamp.

I have also change the order that comments are displayed and added a threaded feature to the comments. This will help group the comments making them more relevant to the discussion. Again, my apology for any resulting confusion.

This change will be effective at 08:15 on 22 August 2010.  

Update #1: This is new experience and it may take while to smooth things out, so that every thing is fair and balanced.  I do not want to favor one side over the other. Yes, mistakes will be made, but I will try to make corrections. If you feel I was unfair my email is rwsteele(at)gmail.com

Blog Update: Search Engine Added

Russ Steele

Typepad has developed a native search engine function for Typepad blogs. Check out the search box in the upper left hand corner of the sidebar, right above the Jobs First Yes on 23 graphic. Give it a try, it searches both the posts and comments for your chosen key word. 

“Our Climate” App now available for iPhone and iTouch

Russ Steele

Thanks to the fine work of developer, Paul of Aeris Systems and support of climate scientist and skeptics around the world: Lubos Motl, Willie Soon, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Henrik Svensmark, Will Happer, Bob Carter, Craig Idso, Paul Reiter, Joanne Nova, Lord Christopher Monckton, and Anthony Watts, there is now a Climate App for your iPhone and iPod Touch.

This apps provides the latest climate change graphs and blog information. It can help you win pub, cocktail party, and water cooler climate change debates with lots of pictures, graphs and more. More details on the development and features of this app can be found at Watts Up With That and the Our Climate webs site. There are links to the Apple iPhone Store at both sites.

Nevada County Connected - Is today the beginning or the end?(Updated)

Russ Steele

One of the pillars of Nevada County’s economic futures is the expansion of broadband across the County, enabling access to all citizens that need or desire the service. The Economic Resource Council (ERC) has worked hard with it’s community partners to secure a multi-million dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant for Nevada County Connected, a middle mile project to provide a broadband backbone to unserved rural areas of the County.

In June  the (ERC) has been notified that the Nevada County Connected (NCC) wireless broadband Internet network project has been brought into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Round 2 due diligence process.  According the project web site:

The Round 2 application for NCC was submitted by the ERC on March 26 requesting $7.69 million in federal stimulus funding for the $11.1 million project within the Comprehensive Community Infrastructure (CCI) category under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). This stimulus funding is provided through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Nevada County Connected was recently included in Governor Schwarzenegger’s top 10 recommended CCI projects in Round 2, and has already received a California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant of $1.1 million — a 10% match predicated on the receipt of ARRA funding.

Today, the 2nd of July, 2010, President Obama will announce the funding of 66 projects to expand broadband connections in rural and poor areas across the country. The announcement will focus on grants and loans for "middle mile connections" to communities lacking broadband access and "last mile awards" to connect homes, hospitals and schools to their community's broadband infrastructure.

Given the middle mile focus of the grants and the nature of the Nevada County Connected project, there is a high probability that this is the beginning of a major economic development project for the Economic Resource Council.  Stay Tuned.

Update #1(07-02-10,06:35) There are NO California projects on the list of 66 to be announced by the President! Is this the end, or will Nevada County Connected find another way!

Update #2 (07-02-10, 14.50) Here is a link to the USDA Press Release with details on the projects that won.