Calling All Residents: Take the Residential Broadband Survey

By SLNext
In Uncategorized
Mar 20th, 2018
6 Comments
7784 Views

If you are a resident of San Leandro, and you were unable to attend the Community Broadband Workshops in February, you can still help! The City’s consultant, Magellan Advisors, has developed a broadband survey for San Leandro residents. Please take a few minutes to participate in this survey from your home. The information collected will be instrumental in helping us to craft residential broadband priorities under the Fiber Optic Master Plan, currently under development with the guidance of Magellan Advisors. Click HERE to take the survey and enter for a chance to win one of four $25 gift cards. Participants must complete the entire survey to qualify for the random drawing.

In 2011, the City of San Leandro executed a License Agreement with San Leandro Dark Fiber to build a fiber optic network specifically to advance the City’s economic goals. On the heels of the Great Recession, the priority was to ensure that San Leandro businesses would have access to state of the art telecommunications infrastructure, enabling fast connection to the internet and a host of new “smart” technology applications. The first facility to be lit up was the Main Library!

Lit San Leandro has been successful, empowering the City to attract new software and hardware businesses, new investment and supporting our existing businesses to grow through improved technology. To date, almost 300 businesses have connected to the internet at Lit San Leandro’s fiber optic speeds. Additionally, all San Leandro Unified School District sites now access the internet via a 10 gbps connection.

In 2017, the City Council agreed that it was time to create a Fiber Optic Master Plan to identify broadband expansion opportunities and priorities for all our community stakeholders, including San Leandro residents. At the Residential Broadband Workshops held in February, participants discovered the rapidly expanding technologies available through broadband at home. With your further participation through the Residential Broadband Survey, you can help us to identify your priorities. These priorities will be considered by the City Council for inclusion into the final Fiber Optic Master Plan.

BACKGROUND

In April of 2017, the City of San Leandro issued a Request for Proposals to engage an experienced “Smart City” consultant to assist in development of a Fiber Optic Master Plan. Development of the Lit San Leandro fiber optic network and the Alameda County Bus Rapid Transit line (now under construction) has provided the City with a uniquely modern infrastructure asset: ownership of 30 to 144+ strands of dark fiber throughout the City of San Leandro.

What are the possible services the City could provide its residents, businesses and visitors with this state of the art infrastructure? Of these possibilities, what services do our residents and businesses need and want? To help the City understand its options, Magellan Advisors, under the direction of former Santa Monica Chief Information Officer Jory Wolf, was hired.

The Magellan team invested considerable time in the last quarter of 2017 interviewing City staff throughout all departments to understand challenges that may have a technology solution. In February 2018, Magellan and staff prepared a series of Broadband Community Workshops to engage our residents and our businesses in this exploration. Data collected through the Business Broadband Survey and the Residential Broadband Survey will serve to identify priorities for The Plan.

6 Responses to “Calling All Residents: Take the Residential Broadband Survey”

  1. […] More information about the Lit San Leandro project at  http://sanleandronext.com/calling-all-residents-take-the-residential-broadband-survey/ […]

  2. Jimbo Jones says:

    I really hope San Leandro can implement the fiber optic network to the majority of its residents soon.

    With the repeal of net neutrality, it is only a matter of time until the telecoms start throttling our internet to sell it back to us piecemeal like they do with cable.

    • Theresa Meyers says:

      I do not have a computer to take the survey so I will try to take the survey someplace. I am all for this project. San Leandro is a great city and I love living in the Manor and the future is upon us. San Leandro is in a good location to attract many kinds of different businesses if it is up to date with high tech offerings and jobs that it can create. We also need to remember housing issues that come with all this possible growth.

      • SLNext says:

        In order to run the speed tests, the survey must be taken from your home. However, the survey is mobile-device friendly, so you ought to be able to take it from a smart phone or tablet.

  3. Sarah Bailey says:

    A warning that we need to know the internet speed promised in our contracts would have helped. How many people know that off the top of their head? And you can’t just skip the question to complete the rest of the survey. Very frustrating.

  4. Sandy says:

    Are homes in the unincorporated areas of San Leandro included in this?

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