Santa Cruz Fiber: The Best Connected Mobile Home Park in America

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By Peggy Dolgenos, CEO and Founder of Santa Cruz Fiber, and Cofounder of Cruzio

October 2, 2018 — Santa Cruz, CA

(Photo above: El Rio Mobile Home Park is located in downtown Santa Cruz, situated along the San Lorenzo River. Contributed)

“Our trailer park is right past the edge of your map. Can you extend the build to cover us?”

El Rio Mobile Home Park, nestled by the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, has a lot of of stories to tell. And now it has one more: the fastest internet of any mobile home park in the country. Working with Cruzio Internet, residents of this cool park can now get scorching Gigabit internet for only $50 per month. It’s one of the first Santa Cruz Fiber neighborhoods.

El Rio was founded as a fishing resort in the early 20th century, when salmon ran abundantly in the river. Newspaper clippings, nearly a century old, are in frames on the walls of its community center. There’s a proud history here.

Walking through the park, cars drive by only occasionally and the posted speeds are slow… and slower. As you walk in front of the single- and double-wides, park residents nod “hello” in a friendly way, especially if you’re wearing a Cruzio hat. They’re ecstatic about the new fiber internet. They know they’re special. But it wasn’t just luck — they asked for, and worked for, a better internet choice.

It took many months to get from planning to building to lighting the new Gigabit Fiber Internet, but the first customer watched her speed jump by a factor of 100 on the very first day. That person is also largely responsible for the park getting the network. Her name is Hilary Hamm, and she’s a Fiber Champion.

Cruzio Called for Champions

Early in our planning, we put out a call for neighborhood “champions” — people who wanted to get fiber to their street and were willing to talk to neighbors about it.

We were working on a big project: building fiber to every home and business in the City of Santa Cruz as a start and moving on from there. (Ultimately, Cruzio would like to cover the whole county with high speed fiber and fiber-backed internet — that’s always been the goal.) That ambitious plan was slowed down as we decided to start with a single neighborhood pilot project.

Continue reading article here: https://santacruzfiber.com/blog/the-best-connected-mobile-home-park-in-the-country-and-the-woman-who-made-it-happen

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Tagged Cruzio, Santa Cruz Fiber