Close to Home: Joy Road plight is common in rural areas

[Commentary] For most Californians, getting high-speed Internet at home takes about a week. You figure out which company provides broadband and at what cost, make an appointment for service installation and get connected. But in rural Sonoma County, that process has taken 500 residents along Joy Road four years — and the reasons have everything to do with the high cost of broadband infrastructure and the way telecom companies avoid providing high-speed Internet service in sparsely populated areas.

Although the greater Joy Road area will soon get broadband, thanks to a $7.7 million infrastructure grant from the state Public Utilities Commission’s California Advanced Services Fund, the story of Sonoma County’s “Gigafy Occidental” project is typical of what rural residents face throughout the state. It is also an allegory about the need to subsidize high-speed Internet infrastructure in rural areas.

[Tom West is manager of the North Bay/North Coast Broadband Consortium.]