Nearly a year after announcing Oregon would receive $688 million for the improvement and expansion of affordable, high-speed internet, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said Thursday that the state can now request access to funding to begin administering the program.
A pre-pandemic study estimated 1.7 million Oregonians live in rural areas without access to high-speed broadband.
Nick Batz, director of the Oregon Broadband Office, said while the state generally has good connectivity, establishing access in those under or unserved areas is challenging.
“We’re a big state. We’re the ninth-largest state by landmass. We have counties bigger than some East Coast states. It’s a huge problem,” Batz said. “Getting those houses that are at the end of a gravel driveway, at the end of a country road, that are spread out or in rural parts of the state, that is what we are being tasked with doing.”
Batz said 111,000 locations in Oregon are unserved, meaning there is no broadband service at all or speeds are below 25 megabits per second downstream and 3 megabits per second upstream.