High Speed Internet for Everyone!

By Hannah Alexander
Administrative Support

One of the things that makes Mendocino County a unique (difficult or wonderful, depending on the day) place to run a business is our very rural setting. While there are many advantages to doing business in Mendocino County, there are some disadvantages. One of them is access to high-speed internet, which many residents of Mendocino County lack. According to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, 75% of businesses in Mendocino County are self-employed persons. As Heather pointed out in her last blog post, the digital marketing universe is steadily expanding. The same could be said of the digital banking universe, the digital researching universe, and the digital networking universe. Many of these opportunities are best realized over a high-speed internet connection, and this puts rural entrepreneurs trying to conduct their business over a dial-up connection at a significant disadvantage.


The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is engaged in an effort to identify areas in the United States which either lack high-speed (broadband) internet access completely, or have limited and perhaps unreliable options for broadband access.

Here at West Company, we are very interested in seeing more access to broadband internet for rural areas, so we are encouraging people to send information to the FCC to help identify broadband “dead zones”.

They have even made it easy by offering a short form to fill out. You can respond via the website, also by email, fax or postal mail….