Fiber optic cables will soon connect Grover Beach to Singapore for more robust data and communication systems 

The Pismo State Beach parking lot near Fin's Restaurant and Southeast Asia are about to have a common link.

On Oct. 13, the California Coastal Commission approved a coastal development permit for RTI Solutions to install and operate a fiber optic cable extending from West Grand Avenue in Grover Beach and snaking through state and federal waters until it finally terminates in Singapore.

"Anything you do on your cellphone, on your computer, anything electronic is converted to a digital signal and that is carried on a fiber optic cable," said Chris Brungardt, the president of RTI Solutions Inc.

Brungardt added that telecommunications lines are digital highways that connect "the entire world," and that "more than 95 percent" of all communication involves the use of fiber optics.

The fiber optic cable that won recent Coastal Commission approval is RTI's second Singapore-bound line exiting from Grover Beach. The Coastal Commission greenlit the first cable to Singapore in 2020, which is already installed in Grover Beach. RTI is awaiting construction on the other side of the world.

These cables travel out of a Grover Beach-based conduit structure that was already approved in 2000. Each of the four cables requires a separate permit from the Coastal Commission. While RTI has secured permissions for the two Singapore cables, they have ambitions to connect a third one to Japan and the destination of the fourth cable in the project remains undetermined.

But Grover Beach isn't the only Central Coast fiber optic cable hub.

"Between 1988 and 2005 multiple cables were installed into the Morro Bay area as well. So those had cables going to Australia, Japan, and Hawaii," Brungardt said. "This region has been very active with fiber optic cables by different companies over time."

In 2000, three other fiber optic cables were installed in Grover Beach and the Oceano Dunes area. Those travel to South America (incorporating Mexico and Costa Rica), Japan, and Washington state. Brungardt said that while different companies oversaw those installations over time, he has been personally involved with almost all those procedures, either by working as an engineer or a permitting consultant.

He said that Grover Beach has unique capabilities for fiber optics. For starters, it boosts geographical diversity.

"The industry term for that is redundancy. We have cables that come into Southern California ... into the Point Arena area, and now we have cables that go into the Eureka area," Brungardt said.

The other reason is that Grover Beach is the midpoint that links to other data hubs in major metropolitan areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"The purpose of the cables isn't to serve Grover Beach or this region necessarily, but to serve the entire country. They're links in a global network," he said.

But while the fiber optic cables threading underground through Grover Beach have no direct impact on residents, physical proximity to the lines holds some benefit. Describing the cables to be the size of garden hoses, Brungardt said that despite their small size, they hold tremendous power to carry large amounts of communications traffic.

"So, when a cable comes to shore here in Grover Beach, we terminate it at a cable landing station. Think of it as a really big pipeline coming into that station," he said. "But there's not enough smaller pipelines to carry that data out of this area."

Bigger pipelines must be built into the area to carry the surplus traffic out. That's where local carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Astound come in.

"They will build additional fiber optic cable capacity to Grover Beach so they can carry this traffic," Brungardt said. "When they do that, they oversize that capacity so they can pick up local traffic as well. So you have more supply, which brings the ability to bring individual customers."

The city also stands to gain financially from RTI's project to install the cables. When each of the four lines becomes operational, Grover Beach will receive $100,000 per cable. The first Singapore cable is expected to be working a year from now. The second Singapore cable will be installed in a year and will be operational six months after that.

"It'll be general fund revenue, and it will be allocated by the City Council to meet city services, projects, and needs," Grover Beach City Manager Matthew Bronson told New Times.

Since Grover Beach and RTI already built the conduit structure in 2020 to accommodate the four cables, no other construction work will interrupt life on the city streets.

"The construction activity will really only take place at the beach itself when the cable actually lands," Bronson said. "It's really cool. The cable starts offshore, goes through a line and lands at the beach. From there, it runs through the conduit under the city streets."

"It reflects our location as a beachfront community right across the ocean from Asia. We have a relatively straight shot across the ocean for the cables to be installed," he said.

Bronson attributed the COVID-19 pandemic with developing a sense of urgency about reinforcing communication systems.

"The pandemic showed us how vital virtual online education, training, and meetings were to keep our businesses and communities functioning," he said. "All of that online activity requires data and it requires infrastructure like fiber optic cables in order to run it." Δ

Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at [email protected].