Task force wants broadband available in rural areas

Likening high-speed Internet to basic infrastructure needs such as power and roads, a state task force on Thursday urged a new push to make affordable broadband available to all Californians.

Saying such a system is crucial to the state's economic health, the California Broadband Task Force said government and private industry must team up to expand Internet access and increase speed.

The group released a study that said 94 percent of California residents have broadband access, one of the best rates in the nation. Still, that leaves more than 1.4 million mostly rural Californians stuck in the Internet's slow lane.

Only with ubiquitous access to broadband can the state economy stay competitive with countries that have much faster and more sophisticated networks, the study found.

"These recommendations were developed to leverage the powerful economic opportunities that stem from broadband connectivity," said Dale Bonner, secretary of the California Business, Transportation & Housing Agency and co-chairman of the task force.

The group was formed a year ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and is composed of 21 representatives from the telecommunications industry, education, nonprofits and state and local government.

The group said that in rural areas such as the Sierra Nevada, where affordable broadband is scarce and incomes are low, residents are being left behind.

"This really puts California at a disadvantage in an increasingly competitive global economy," said Charles Giancarolo, a former top executive with Cisco Systems and the task force's co-chairman.

While rural areas often are wanting, the Sacramento region is one of the best served in the state. According to the report, only 4 percent of households in the region have no wired broadband access, compared with 40 percent along the eastern side of the Sierra.

Further, large swaths of Sacramento have some of the fastest Internet service in the nation, thanks to SureWest Communications. The company has laid fiber-optic cable to more than 108,000 homes in the area, enabling customers to buy service at 10, 20 and even 50 megabits per second. Nearly a quarter of those with fiber to their homes are subscribers, said SureWest spokesman Ron Rogers.

While the report raised the prospect of issuing bonds to help pay for broadband expansion, Bonner downplayed that possibility. "We wanted to identify things that can be done without additional funding," he said.

Among the report's suggestions were streamlining the permit process, offering tax incentives for expanding broadband networks and creating statewide e-health and e-government networks, which could be used to remotely diagnose illnesses via video conferencing and for electronic jury selection.

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