Oregon Telephone Fiber Expansion
"JOHN DAY, Ore., Dec. 3, 2019 — U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development State Director John Huffman today announced that USDA is providing $6 million to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure that will provide e-Connectivity for nearly 650 new customers in rural Wheeler and Grant counties. This is one of many funding announcements nationwide in the first round of USDA’s ReConnect Pilot Program investments.
“Internet access is no longer an amenity. It is an essential component of daily life and is as important to rural communities as gaining access to electricity was a century ago,” Huffman said. “Small, remote communities, however, face unique challenges in connecting homes, farms and businesses to this vital resource. We are proud to announce today significant funding to expand high-speed internet access in two frontier-designated Oregon counties.”
Oregon Telephone Corporation (OTC) will use a ReConnect Program grant to deploy 89 miles of fiber to serve some of the most remote areas of the continental United States. The new broadband infrastructure will provide network speeds ranging from 30 megabits per second (Mbps) to 1 gigabyte per second (Gbps). The network will allow Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video services to be delivered to each customer.
Currently, many areas around the town of John Day lack internet service faster than 1.5 Mbps. In a public-private partnership with John Day in its capacity as the leader of the intergovernmental Grant County Digital Network Coalition, OTC is working to provide the fastest internet access to as many residents at the lowest price possible. Under the partnership, OTC will build a fiber network and deliver broadband service to residents and businesses while leasing infrastructure to John Day to provide service to public agencies.
The first new fiber route is northwest of John Day. It will connect the towns of Long Creek, Monument and Spray. The second route will start at the northern edge of the town of Seneca and continue to Canyon City, just south of John Day.
Overall, this expanded fiber optic network will extend broadband across a 242-square-mile area that includes 418 households, 22 businesses, 22 farms, three schools and two fire stations. Almost 650 new customers will be able to receive reliable access to high-speed internet services, improving the quality of life for those who live and work in these remote, rural communities."
Read the whole article here.
Status Updates
April 21, 2022
"Oregon Telephone Corp. is gearing up to bring high-speed fiber optic internet lines to the communities of Monument, Seneca and Long Creek after a nearly three-year planning process involving the city of John Day and Grant County Digital.
Oregon Telephone Corp.’s Marcus Bott says the project was initially smaller in scale but eventually went on to encompass other small communities within the county. “We had plans to go just to Long Creek,” he said. “We were going to build that ourselves. The city had some goals they were looking at, so the USDA opened up a grant application that would allow us to meet our goals.”
Later meetings with Grant County Digital — a government consortium that involves the county and the cities of John Day and Seneca — revealed some overlapping goals that led to bringing all those ideas together into one project with a larger scale.
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The project is being funded by an $8 million US Department of Agriculture grant that requires a 25% match. The match funds come in the form of a $1 million investment from Oregon Telephone in conjunction with another $500,000 grant from the city of John Day and a separate $500,000 loan from the city. The loan carries a 5% interest rate that will be forgiven if the project is completed in 24 months. Oregon Telephone projects the work will be done by the end of the construction season this year."
To read the full article by the Blue Mountain Eagle click here.
