Broadband access has been an issue for California's North Coast region, so the fragile nature of communications was, again for the fifth time, recently highlighted by a fiber optic cable outage that
impacted communication networks serving the region around Eureka and Humboldt County, California.

Through the Digital Redwoods initiative, Access Humboldt is developing public, education and government networks to provide broadband media access. Local efforts include advocacy for community broadband deployment, and adoption efforts center around the Generation ZeroDivide project which received the region's only ARRA broadband stimulus funding.

Our executive director, Sean McLaughlin spoke with KMUD News director Terri Klemetson about broadband policy and spectrum issues, the discussion aired on a Local News program that aired on August 9, 2011. [ref: Rural Broadband Policy Group, New America Foundation]

Click on the link below to listen to the interviews. News item begins at 12:00 with fiber outage follow up story, followed at 13:10 by news item about Yurok Connect and "TV White Space" spectrum policy - benefit of unlicensed community broadband.