The U.S. Department of Commerce last month awarded Oregon’s Lane, Klamath and Douglas Counties 8.3 million dollars with a mandate attached: expand high-speed broadband networks.
The counties’ successful bid for the federal grant is in large part thanks to the local telecommunications lobby. Milo Mecham, Lane Council of Governments planner, said applicants were encouraged to match offers for broadband stimulus money designated by the Broadband Data Improvement Act, passed into law in 2008.
One local fellowship played a major part in affording that match.
Regional Fiber Consortium is a partnership between local governments and a large telecommunications company called Pacific Fiberlink.
“With our $2 million and the $8.3 million in stimulus money, it brings the project to about $10.5 million,” Mecham said.
In Eugene, broadband connection improvements will be targeted around “critical institutions,” such as several of Eugene’s fire stations, Petersen Barn Community Center, and a back-up fiber path to the proposed new Eugene Police building.
Mecham said the consortium intends to first meet the requirements for connecting critical institutions, then shift focus to improving the connections of residential and small business sectors.
“We committed in the grant to hook up the schools and medical centers and critical institutions,” Mecham said, “but once those are finished we’re planning to work with private providers to hook up the fiber to local businesses and private residences.”
This would bring high-speed Internet to areas that formerly had no access to such technology.
Mecham said that, of the many locales throughout Lane County that will receive installments of broadband, Dunes City and Westfir, about 70 miles east and 40 miles southeast of Eugene respectively, were the only towns that would not be included. “We weren’t able to justify running fiber out there because of the critical institution requirement,” Mecham said.
Some residents of Dunes City heard the news and felt overlooked.
“I’m surprised any communities would be omitted from this,” Dunes City resident Fred Hilden said. “We’re being left out.”
In addition to publicly funded improvements to broadband, Eugene has submitted an application to become one of several communities to participate in Google’s latest trial of experimental fiber networks.
“Google has said they want to build and test an ultra-fast broadband network for several communities that would provide internet 100 times faster than most people get,” said Randy Kolb, City of Eugene information technology director. “Obviously, that is very appealing to a lot of communities.”
Mecham concurred.
“You know Topeka, Kan.? They changed their name to Google for a month,” he said, “to show Google how much they wanted that money.”
While Topeka took an attention-grabbing approach to courting Google, Eugene and its sister cities partnered up to make their case.
“Eugene partnered up with Springfield and Junction City, and each put in applications,” Mecham said. “By cross-referencing each other, they were hoping to strengthen their application by showing how much enthusiasm there was here.”
According to its Web site, Google hopes to potentially reach up to 500,000 people with its experimental, high-speed broadband networks.
“Fiber optic cable is the foundation for all telecommunications,” Mecham said, “and these ‘fiber to the premise’ upgrades Google is proposing, they are lightning fast. You can download a feature length film in seconds. It’s way faster than anything else available.”
But Mecham said he was on the fence about Eugene’s odds with Google.
“They’re better than winning the lottery,” he said. “(Eugene is) competing with 1,100 other cities across the country, and Google didn’t really cite the criteria for how they’d choose. It’s gonna be tough. The combined application gives them some strength. I mean, Topeka, Kan. is only one city.”
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Broadband networks to expand in Lane, nearby counties
Daily Emerald
April 1, 2010
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