Editorial: California fires’ cruel cycle of natural and human disaster - SFChronicle.com: While the population of California and most of the Bay Area grew little in 2019, and Los Angeles County lost residents for the second year running, according to the state Department of Finance, most of the fastest-growing cities and counties were on the metropolitan edges. San Joaquin and San Benito counties, both in the outer orbit of the Bay Area, were alone in the region in experiencing more than a percentage point of growth, much of it due to housing production. Excluding rebuilding to compensate for earlier wildfire losses, the cities that saw the greatest housing-related population growth were also on the outskirts of the Bay Area — including Lathrop in San Joaquin County and Rio Vista in Solano County — or within an extreme commute of Los Angeles. This continues a long-term trend. Six of the nation’s 25 fastest-growing cities over the past two decades were in California, according to one analysis of census data, and all were on the sprawling boundaries of cities and metropolises.
Big implications here for current advanced telecom infrastructure policy and planning. The reason is these areas on the edges of metro areas while nominally exurban have been regarded by telephone and cable companies as rural and thus suffer from spotty advanced telecom infrastructure.
The return on investment doesn't come fast enough under their business models to justify investment and current federal and state subsidy programs don't offer sufficient incentive to build. Cable companies remain in their confined franchise 1970s "footprints." Telephone companies allow decades old copper lines to rot on the poles instead of modernizing them to fiber to the premise, with only some customers served by limited range and throughput first generation ADSL over copper.
While frustrating to many exurbanites before the public health restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic that has turned homes into workplaces, schools and medical clinics, deficient advanced telecom infrastructure has taken on a new degree of urgency in the exurbs.