City of John Day Forges Partnership with Oregon Telephone Corporation, Seeks Broadband Infrastructure Grant to Boost Regional Economic Development and Public Safety

PRESS RELEASE

Contact:
Nicholas Green, City Manager, City of John Day: 541-575-0028
DeeDee Kluser, General Manager, Oregon Telephone Corporation: 541-932-4411

May 14, 2018—The City of John Day, Oregon, today announced it is applying for a $2.9 million 2018 Community Connect Grant, offered by the Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to help construct a broadband network that would connect unserved rural-frontier communities in Seneca and nearby areas of Grant County along U.S. Highway 395. This would be the first phase of a multi-phase network providing significant regional economic and public safety benefits.

Under the plan, an established and well-known private partner, Oregon Telephone Corporation (Ortelco), would run the broadband business, offering high-speed internet service to more than 100 homes and businesses throughout the proposed service area. The government’s role would be limited to building and operating the fiber backbone—the broadband equivalent of constructing a road.

In addition to providing new broadband service to Seneca and surrounding communities, the project would bring major public safety benefits including high-speed fiber optic cabling to the Fall Mountain Communications Tower, a critical relay site in Grant County’s public safety infrastructure.

The project would also bring fiber to the Swick Old Growth Interpretive Site and Starr Campground in the Malheur National Forest, providing public safety benefits in cases of emergency, and providing an additional enhancement to promote tourism and related business development.

Finally, the project would provide ancillary benefits beyond the service territory. Expanding broadband infrastructure in the region would allow private service providers such as Ortelco to do more business, improve service, and assist regional growth and development within John Day and surrounding communities. Additional benefits include improved and redundant broadband service at multiple critical community facilities, such as Blue Mountain Hospital and Grant School District 3 educational facilities.

Community Connect grants help fund broadband deployment into rural communities where it is not economically viable for private sector providers to deliver service. The proposed service area and surrounding communities in Grant County are excellent candidates for this program. The area has the second-highest ranking in Oregon on the Digital Divide Index (68.27), a measure of broadband gaps. The majority of the service area has no cellular telephone service. The speed of internet service, where available, is less than 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps), leaving area residents and businesses unable to take full advantage of many online resources and business opportunities. Such opportunities are critical to the economic development of this region given that more than 56% of households in the service area are low-to-moderate-income. Grant County has had the highest unemployment rate in Oregon since 2012 and has experienced more than 30 years of population decline.

To carry out this project, John Day, Seneca, and Grant County created the Grant County Digital Network Coalition, an intergovernmental agency. Grant County Digital will be Ortelco’s public partner.

This public-private partnership approach is optimal for this type of build, where capital costs are too high for a private provider alone to handle the necessary infrastructure costs, the addressable market is small, and both public and private interests can be better served by sharing resources.

To help close the digital divide, the City of John Day secured a $1.8 million appropriation, representing seed money from the 2017 Oregon General Legislative Assembly to begin this project. The project enjoys the strong support of the Oregon Fiber Partnership, the new collaboration between Oregon’s research universities and state government. OFP will work closely with local governments to help address critical broadband infrastructure needs in support of enhanced economic development, education, health care, and public safety in rural Oregon communities.

The broadband network would be deployed in phases. Phase 1 would be building the backbone from John Day to Seneca and connecting homes and businesses in the service area, and would be funded by the community connect grant. Phase 2 would be continuing the backbone from Seneca to Burns and tying into the Oregon Fiber Partnership network in Burns. Phase 3 would consist of additional network expansions throughout Grant County.

Supporting the partnership between Ortelco and Grant County Digital is a well-rounded, highly experienced, and diverse group of professional services firms including Commstructure Consulting, a technical consulting services company based in Oregon City; Fiber Channels, a telecommunications firm specializing in fiber optic cable network design, engineering, permitting, construction management, maintenance, and operations; CTC Technology & Energy, a consulting firm with qualifications and capabilities in broadband financial analysis, business planning, engineering, and network strategic planning; and the Cohen Law Group, a law firm specializing in telecommunications and broadband matters.