High speed Internet capability is increasing in Los Altos Hills with the city announcing the completion of work installing underground fiber that promises to not only increase connectivity in as many homes in town as possible but will also enhance emergency communications.
Los Altos Hills Community Fiber (LAHCF) was contracted in October 2024 by the city through American Rescue Plan Act grant money to improve internet access for residents. Mayor Rajiv Bhateja said that about $725,000 of the $800,000 ARPA grant was used for the project.
The project took about 20 months to complete, resulting in roughly eight miles of core underground fiber infrastructure added between Town Hall and the Ark at Foothill College, as well as several homes beyond Foothill College.
“The primary goal of this effort was to provide robust emergency communications,” Bhateja said. “A secondary goal was to extend fiber access to as many homes as possible.”
Los Altos Community Fiber Board member Gautam Agrawal said the addition of the undergrounding reduces the time needed to install and deploy fiber to the home and also lowers the cost for adjacent parcels to install fiber at homes.
“It also provides a direct underground redundant fiber pathway to the Foothill College Ark (emergency response bunker) for disaster preparedness,” said Agrawal. “Additionally, when a future project is completed, as part of an existing permit, it will allow the town direct access to the lowest latency, highest throughput fiber optic network in the area.”
Agrawal said the hope is for this to help move away from unreliable and more expensive service providers. LAHCF offers 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps service with 1 to 2 msec latency, supported through its ISP partner NextLevel and can upgrade easily to 25GB, 40GB or upwards of 100GB as demand grows. Most importantly, this fiber is underground and is averse from the risk of outages by way of weather or rodents.
“Our primary line is 10 times higher bandwidth and much, much higher reliability than an existing ISP with a savings of approximately $750 per month,” Agrawal said. “We also laid four strands of dark fiber for the town to use as it sees fit. Each strand is capable of transmitting the current bandwidth of the entire world on a single fiber,” Agrawal said. “So there is futureproofing inherent in the architecture.”
Agrawal also said this installation could deploy higher-quality wireless throughout the town like cellular or multicast wireless for hard-to-reach homes in difficult terrain. The fiber alone can help improve speeds, but it will help more with a low cost line with LAHCF, Agrawal said.
LAHCF is a community-owned and run nonprofit, so all excess monies go back to its members. Agrawal said the nonprofit has made two cost reductions for monthly service in the past three-plus years as more members come in.
Los Altos Hills and the LAHCF are hoping to set a date for a ribbon cutting ceremony soon.
