REDDING, CA – Dec 11, 2012 –Native Business Enterprises (NBE) and Siskiyou Telephone Company have joined forces to form Golden Bear Broadband (GBB LLC) to implement a comprehensive fiber-based broadband capability across 16 rural Northern California counties, the Northern California Regional Middle-Mile Infrastructure (NCRMMI).
GBB LLC will use the NCRMMI plan, developed over the past year by the Northeastern and Upstate California Connect Consortia, to secure the capital funds to implement a robust, comprehensive, cohesive, and diverse broadband capability across Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, and Yolo counties. Once implemented, GBB LLC will manage and operate NCRMMI to serve the 1.634 million Californians in this region of the State for the next several decades.
The NCRMMI has been designed to serve three primary purposes. First, NCRMMI will be a robust and redundant backhaul infrastructure that is needed throughout Northern California, but which does not currently exist. NCRMMI is needed to provide the quantity and quality of services to businesses, government entities, residential customers, anchor institutions (schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and public safety agencies), Native American communities, and other customers throughout these 16 counties.
Second, NCRMMI has been designed to provide one or more major interconnection points in each county which will link to countywide backbone system infrastructures and through them, to last-mile infrastructures in communities. The Northeastern and Upstate California Connect Consortia have developed conceptual designs for a countywide backbone system for each of the 16 counties.
With NCRMMI in place, users will have diverse access to communications resources and capabilities throughout the state, the nation, and the world at broadband speeds that exceed the standards set by the state and nation as necessary for full participation in our 21st century technological society. Thanks to the infrastructure fiber-optic base, these speeds will be easily increased as these standards increase.
Third, NCRMMI has been designed to ensure potentially more than 90 major anchor sites have fiber connectivity directly to NCRMMI, or to individual countywide backbone systems that connect to NCRMMI.
In essence, NCRMMI has been designed to be more than just a “regional middle-mile” infrastructure. It is the foundation to providing broadband services to this region of California.
