The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians recently reached a major milestone with the launch of the Tribe’s long-awaited Chumash Fiber Network, providing next-gen, affordable broadband access to a California community long-neglected by regional private monopolies.

For generations, telecom giants treated Tribal reservations and rural enclaves across California with predictable neglect: underinvesting in core infrastructure, charging exorbitant rates for slower asymmetrical copper, and insisting low population density makes modern fiber deployment economically unviable.

Like many communities, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians has taken matters into their own hands with the Chumash Fiber Network, now providing speeds up to five gigabits per second (Gbps) to reservation residents.

Spanning 13 miles of underground fiber across 1,400 acres of ranch land, the network is slated to connect roughly 400 locations — serving an estimated 853 residents — alongside Tribal administrative buildings, health facilities, and the new 143-home Camp 4 residential development.

Funding for the network was provided by Tribal Technical Assistance and federal planning grants via the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP), as well as a $4.7 million grant awarded under the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) Last Mile Federal Funding Account.

State grant support was coupled with California’s open-access Middle Mile Broadband Initiative (MMBI), which is attempting to give emerging competitors and municipalities a leg-up in a market long-dominated by extractive regional telecom monopolies.

Unlike legacy cable and phone providers that nickel-and-dime captive subscribers with hidden fees, usage limits, and arbitrary speed throttling, the Chumash Fiber Network was engineered as an essential public utility.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has announced another $237 million in new grants that will help fund broadband expansion across 21 different California towns, cities, counties, and tribal communities. Meanwhile, numerous additional grants that are waiting in the wings are expected to get formal approval sometime in September.

Alpine, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Santa Barbara, and Tulare counties are among the latest winners in California’s $2 billion Last Mile Federal Funding Account Grant Program (FFA).

That program is an extension of California’s ambitious Broadband For All initiative, a $6 billion effort aimed at dramatically boosting broadband competition and access across the Golden State.

At an August 22 meeting, CPUC officials formally approved both a third and fourth round of FFA broadband funding. With these latest two rounds of funding, the CPUC says it has doled out $434 million in grant awards across 22 counties across California.

Open Access Fiber Comes To Alpine County Via Third FFA Round

The third round of formally approved grant awards included $95 million in funding for 10 broadband projects across California’s Alpine, Modoc, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and Tulare counties. This round of awards also included grants for the Fort Bidwell Indian Community in Modoc County and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians in Santa Barbara County.

Alpine County’s $7 million grant for fiber broadband expansion will be managed by the Golden State Connect Authority and help fund the Alpine County Broadband Network, an open access fiber network that will deliver fiber for the first time to 721 unserved locations and 818 unserved residents across Alpine County.