Purpose

Digital Redwoods is deploying broadband communications capacity to “least served” communities for the Counties, Tribes, municipalities, community service districts (fire, transportation, water, etc.), schools, libraries, health care, and other public, education and community-based facilities starting with Humboldt County, and including adjacent tribal lands in a wider region known as the North Coast of California.

Broadband network facilities and related resources developed by the Digital Redwoods project with public funds will be treated as public benefit assets managed on behalf of, and accountable to participating local communities – education institutions, government agencies and community based organizations.

Digital Redwoods will use federal and state funds and other community resources to develop new sustainable regional broadband communications network assets with dedicated fiber and wireless capacity through community anchor facilities such as schools, health, and library facilities to support robust next generation digital media applications for public safety, education and other community communications purposes.

For Federal ARRA broadband stimulus funding, Digital Redwoods is supporting public benefit applications to deploy comprehensive community infrastructure, including “last mile” wireless networks for Hoopa and Orleans (Panamnik) as proposed by Hoopa Tribe. And Access Humboldt is applying on behalf of the County and others for the Humboldt Community Access Network HCAN designed to reach the least served communities anchor institutions.

Broadband network deployment for community anchors will maximize opportunities for carrier neutral co-location, peering and interconnection between commercial, non-commercial and public safety networks serving remote communities throughout the Redwood Coast region. Adoption and demand creation efforts will engage local resources at each location served.

Broadband deployment, demand creation, adoption and inclusion components of Digital Redwoods will serve each community through community anchor institutions (schools, libraries, health clinics, fire stations, grange halls, community centers, etc.) at remote unserved and underserved locations throughout the region. Through these community anchor institutions, public, education and government (PEG) partnerships with private sector participation will launch social enterprise efforts to advance and sustain regional and local broadband media programs.