Delayed emails. Glitchy videos. Credit card processing snafus.
“Messages don’t even go through sometimes,” said Anthony Fonseca, one of hundreds of Cuyama Valley residents who don’t always enjoy a solid internet connection.
Crews this year are placing new fiber optic internet cable across Santa Barbara County, installing two new “middle mile” trunk lines expected to snake along nearly 200 miles of major transportation corridors.
As these projects progress, community leaders say they look forward to seeing the next generation of broadband internet reach tens of thousands of residents. They also hope to close a digital divide harming rural places like Cuyama, a high desert community of farms and low-slung homes and businesses — located far from the South Coast at the northeast corner of the county.
“Cuyama is not getting the right service,” said Santa Barbara County Supervisor Roy Lee, whose First District includes the valley. “After school, Cuyama gets a dip in service, because all the kids go home and start playing video games. It’s the worst time for businesses… It’s very inconsistent.”
Crews at work
The new trunk lines are part of a larger nearly $3.9 billion public-private network designed to serve the entire state of California. The goal is to provide physical infrastructure that internet service providers can connect to in order to deliver reliable, high-speed “last mile” fiber optic internet service along final legs that reach end-users at home, work, or public places.
Working south to north, Lumen Technologies is installing one middle mile line along Highway 101 from Ventura County through Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, and Goleta to Highway 1. The line will follow Highway 1 through Lompoc and Vandenberg Space Force Base, veer toward Casmalia, reconnect with Highway 101 and travel north through Guadalupe to San Luis Obispo County.
Spanning more than 100 miles, the line is expected to be completed in June.
“That work is underway and 36% complete,” said Fred Luna, director of project delivery and construction at the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments. Through a strategic plan it approved in 2022, the agency has been helping to plan, prioritize and fund broadband initiatives.
The other middle mile line is expected to span 85 miles. Central Valley Independent Network, also known as Vast Networks, plans to connect Santa Barbara County along Highway 166 — right past Cuyama and New Cuyama — to a broader web of middle mile serving the Central Valley.
At Highway 101, the line will run south to Highway 135 and continue south through Santa Maria, Orcutt, and Los Alamos until it briefly reconnects with the 101. It will then run along Highway 154 and Highway 246 to the Santa Ynez Valley and Chumash Reservation.
Mapping the digital divide
Concern for Cuyama echoes a national trend aimed at ensuring rural areas have the robust tools and access people need to run competitive businesses, work remotely, and stay literate with the latest technologies.
One in five Californians don’t have regular access to high-speed broadband internet service, according to the state.
Across the country, technology initiatives boosted access rates in recent years but rural areas still fell short of metro and suburban areas. While the most recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report pegged nationwide broadband availability at 95 percent as of December 2024, interest groups have lower estimates.
In one competing analysis, 68 percent of rural Americans had home broadband subscriptions compared with 80 percent of those in non-rural areas, according to the Benton Institute, a foundation focused on enhancing telecommunications access with support from private and corporate funding.
Cuyama subsidies a question mark
Despite all the benefits it promises to deliver, plugging the Cuyama Valley into the fiber optic future — using the fiber optic trunk line slated to run right through the area — could prove challenging.
In a recent round of grant funding, the California Public Utilities Commission in December announced $96 million in support for last mile fiber optic lines in jurisdictions across the state.
These subsidies often are needed to entice providers into investing in a small community like Cuyama, said Shelby Arthur, who coordinates the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast, a public- and non-profit-funded organization working to expand broadband across Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties.
So far, Cuyama hasn’t qualified.
Data shared with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by internet service providers currently operating in the area appears to show average bandwidth speeds there exceed a 25 mbps (megabyte per second) baseline minimum, rendering the area adequately covered in the eyes of grantmakers and thus ineligible for funding.
A recent test coordinated by the Broadband Consortium among a relatively small sample of Cuyama area customers showed an average internet speed of 30 mbps.
“This is enough to maybe conduct some email,” Arthur said. “If you have more than one person (at the home or business) trying to access the internet at the same time, it can begin to really compromise the bandwidth available and slow down the connection.”
By comparison, fiber internet typically provides homes and businesses with bandwidth speeds up to about 1,000 mbps, according to Verizon.
Looking ahead
Eyeing future rounds of grant funding, “We’re continuing to focus on validating the actual speeds experienced by Cuyama community members,” Arthur said, adding more comprehensive test results could potentially be used to contest future grant rejections if needed.
To further advocate for the valley, AmeriCorps workers in partnership with the consortium and the Blue Sky Center, a Cuyama economic development hub, have been going door-to-door to find out first-hand what residents are experiencing.
With 74 responses received from 250 targeted households, the effort found 40% of respondents have no home internet. The remaining 60 percent — including 31% using a SpaceX Starlink satellite internet connection — typically pay a costly $80 a month for service.
“We have some results that really demonstrate the digital divide here in Santa Barbara County,” said Cristian Vasquez, a member of the American Connection Corps, an AmeriCorps program focused on digitally disconnected communities across the country. “We’re working on bringing those issues front and center.”
