Santa Maria residents, businesses, and government agencies will soon have the fastest internet speeds on the Central Coast.
The city of Santa Maria announced on Jan. 25 its agreement with Wave Broadband, an internet broadband and cable services company, allowing for the construction of a fiber-optic network ring that will bring high-speed, fiber-based, gigabit internet service to the city.
Construction on the 4-mile ring, which will run along Main and Miller streets and Blosser and Betteravia roads, has already started and is expected to be finished later this year, according to Mark Peterson, a representative of Wave Broadband. It is unclear how much the project will cost.
"Gigabit speeds are among the fastest connections available anywhere, and they have not been consistently available in the area prior to this agreement," Peterson said. "This will enable Santa Maria to become the Central Coast's first true 'gigabit' city."
The fiber-optic network ring is expected to improve the city's economy and public safety network, according to Mark van de Kamp, public information officer for the city.
An increase in internet speeds will bring more options for reliable high-speed Wi-Fi to Santa Maria residents and businesses, many of which rely on internet connections for efficiency, van de Kamp said. Businesses will be able to purchase a high-speed fiber connection from Wave Broadband and choose from various connection speeds. Businesses and government agencies, he said, can contact the company and have fiber installed at their business locations.
"For businesses, a core part of being efficient and productive lies in having fast, reliable access to the internet," van de Kamp said. "This fiber backbone will provide businesses in the Santa Maria area with the option to connect to much faster internet than is currently available in the area."
Santa Maria offered an internet connection rate of 3 megabits per second when the city first began installing a conduit in anticipation of this project a decade ago, van de Kamp said. And while the city's current connection rate is much faster, at several hundred megabits per second, its initial connection speed should jump to 5 gigabits per second through the Wave Broadband project, a dramatic increase.
But the high speeds won't just help businesses.
The fiber ring, van de Kamp said, will connect to the Santa Maria Police Department's secure Data Center, a large investment aimed at marketing the center as a revenue-generating facility open to other government entities and to business ventures within the area. The faster internet capacity will also improve dispatch and radio communications in the forms of speech, photos, and text for city police and fire services.
The project could make Santa Maria a regional emergency dispatch center, and van de Kamp said other public safety providers on the Central Coast have already expressed interest in the upgrade.
While Wave Broadband and the city have been working together on this project for a year, the implementation process is just beginning.
Passengers on Santa Maria Area Transit (SMAT) routes 5 and 6 will be offered high-speed Wi-Fi this summer through the city's pilot program of the project. Santa Maria's transit division, which van de Kamp said has other technology needs for this project, will be offering public Wi-Fi as the network is installed.
Eventually, van de Kamp said the city will choose locations, likely downtown, where residents will be able to use free public Wi-Fi, part of the city's effort to provide high-speed internet connectivity to low-income residents and students.
"Partnering with Wave provides tremendous benefits to the city and its customers," City Manager Jason Stilwell said in a city press release. "The community will gain access to unprecedented levels of bandwidth capacity that will impact the way they work and learn."
