The state of California has found its “system of record” for a project of likely historic proportions, the CEO of a Maine-based IT company said Tuesday.
State officials are working with VETRO, known for its “cloud-native fiber management system,” as they move forward on development, design and construction of what is envisioned as a multibillion-dollar, 10,000-mile middle-mile broadband network aimed at erasing disparities and standardizing the availability of high-speed Internet across California. Among the takeaways:
- Work has been underway for many months on the network. In September 2021, officials chose the nonprofit Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) California Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative as the network’s third-party administrator. In October 2022, IT executives joined state and local government heads in inland San Diego County to ceremonially insert the first piece of fiber into the ground. With its system, VETRO will underpin the entire build-out of the network, providing participants with multiple, securitized layers of visibility into the build depending upon their levels of access.
“This project is really important to California, and we’re excited and honored to partner with the state to aid in their efforts to accelerate the deployment of high-speed fiber to ultimately connect underserved and unserved communities throughout the entire state,” VETRO CEO Will Mitchell said Tuesday during a press conference that was made available via Zoom. “Vetro’s cloud-native mapping and fiber management platform will simplify and accelerate the network’s implementation.” - The state has already “embarked on its collaboration with VETRO,” the company told industry Insider — California Wednesday via email, using its services to “facilitate initial project stages, including training on the use of VETRO for network planning and design and on-going maintenance of the fiber system of record.” VETRO’s system digitizes fiber assets, it told Industry Insider, giving network operators a “system of record” that pinpoints the “precise location of every fiber strand from a single repository.” Multiple users can access network data at the same time, easing “collaboration between hundreds of engineers, contractors and state workers.” The company was selected through what the CEO described as “an extensive RFI and RFP process to be selected as the fiber management system,” during the fourth quarter of 2022. The contract was signed Feb. 3 and runs through 2026; it’s valued, VETRO said via email, at approximately $1.9 million.
- Asked about construction milestones this calendar year, California Department of Transportation Spokesman Matt Rocco told Industry Insider 20 miles of construction are underway and work orders are expected to be released this summer to start more work by year’s end.
“Most of the system will be implemented between 2024 and 2026 using a variety of methods including the build by Caltrans, lease, and joint build,” Rocco said via email. - VETRO’s system, the company and its CEO said, will be used specifically for the state’s nascent middle-mile network. “The state of California will be formulating their plans for operations of this network and choosing a whole variety of systems that will be in play that we’re not privy to at this point in time,” Mitchell said. “The work in design and engineering and in construction and in management ultimately belongs to other parties and we’re just honored to be able to provide that home base for the data that will end up being the documented system of record for this important new set of assets.”
- Funding is expected to come from 2021’s state Senate Bill 156, which provided $3.25 billion for middle-mile broadband statewide, as well as $2 billion for “last-mile” infrastructure connecting homes and businesses — $1 billion each for rural and urban communities. As Industry Insider reported, SB 156 also set in statute the California Department of Technology’s Office of Broadband and Digital Literacy — requiring that office to spearhead “acquisition and management of contracts” to develop, build and operate “a statewide open access middle-mile broadband network, as defined, to provide an opportunity for last-mile providers, anchor institutions and tribal entities to connect.“ The bill formalized CDT’s position of deputy director for Broadband and Digital Literacy and created a broadband advisory committee to monitor the construction and establishment of the broadband network. And it required the Office of Broadband and Digital Literacy to work with the selected third-party administrator on creation of the broadband network, with annual reports to the Legislature’s two budget committees.
