Broadband

What is Broadband?

"The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access. Broadband includes several high-speed transmission technologies such as:

(FCC, 2014)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently defines broadband as connectivity speeds that reach a minimum of 25mbps downstream and 3mbps upstream (25/3). The FCC definition of broadband is particularly important as it establishes a minimum qualification for many of the federal broadband grant programs.

Columbia County Broadband Study

Over the last decade, states and communities across the country have been engaged in the process of actively seeking solutions to help bring broadband (high speed internet) to unserved and underserved neighborhoods and communities within their jurisdictions.

Columbia County was recently awarded an Oregon Business Development Department (OBDD) grant, funded in part by the Oregon State Lottery, for Broadband Planning. The grant project looked at the current availability and need for high-speed internet access across the county, determined where there were gaps, and made recommendations for possible solutions to bridge those gaps.

A significant portion of the project was collecting information and input from businesses and residents. The county worked with a consultant to conduct information gathering and outreach activities, including a survey of randomly selected Columbia County households, a series of special focus group meetings with business, government, and educational entities, and two public town hall events.

Why Perform a Study?

Today broadband is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is part of the economic engine of any locality. Residents, businesses, tourists and others need broadband in order to perform basic functions such as:

  • Applying for jobs and/or working from home
  • Accessing web-based government and educational services
  • Conducting business and supporting business services directly tied to revenue
  • Staying connected to family
  • Accessing the internet for research or entertainment

Municipalities recognize that broadband is key to the livability and continued vitality of their jurisdictions, and gaps in service need to be addressed.

What Did the Study Find?

With the OBDD Grant, Columbia County worked with Vantage Point Solutions (VPS) to prepare a Broadband Feasibility Study. Key highlights from the study, as well as links to the full report are provided below. The Broadband Study results were provided in three milestone reports and a final summary.

  • Phase 1 - Broadband Provider Analysis looked at the current commercial broadband provider environment by zip code. Sources for this information were publicly available sites providing data that is largely self-reported by the broadband carriers and aggregated into Census Blocks. Individual addresses in any given area may not be served, but if the area has some service by a provider, the entire area is generally reported by the provider as being served.
  • Phase 2 - Community Stakeholder Outreach solicited feedback from stakeholders, both residents and businesses, to determine what the actual need is, what the level of satisfaction with existing service is, and what the level of interest would be in a potential municipal broadband offering. This phase included a random residential survey sent to 4001 households, and informal online survey, stakeholder meetings and one-on-one interviews with a variety of business, education, and government entities in the county, and 2 public town hall events. 
  • Phase 3 - Network Models looked at a variety of options for municipal broadband solutions and made recommendations for Columbia County. An initial, high level cost estimate was provided in this phase, as well as information on possible grant funding opportunities.

Highlights of the reports, along with links to the documents, are provided in the Study Results section of the Broadband Study page

What's Next?

In addition to assisting in identifying service gaps, Vantage Point Solutions, the consulting firm that worked with County staff to complete this project, provided a series of recommendations for next steps. A summary of these recommendations can be found in the What's Next? section of the Broadband Study page

VPS provided the following Strategic Plan outline to help inform next steps in the County's project. The purpose of a Strategic Plan is to focus on setting mid to long-term goals and devise a plan for achieving them.

The Strategic Plan Summary is available in the Final Executive report. It provides additional guidance for the implementation of the three main recommendations, which are:

  1. The County should create a Broadband Consortium that can focus on pursuing funding and establishing partnerships for middle-mile and last-mile network deployment.  
  2. The County should pursue establishing a partnership with a last-mile provider.
  3. The County should consider building a middle-mile network that could be implemented all at once or phased in over time.
  4. The County should research potential grant funding opportunities.

It should be noted that Columbia County should focus on completing steps 1 and 2 first. The County should establish a Consortium before establishing partnerships and both of these steps should happen before a network plan can be truly developed.   

More Info

For links to additional information on broadband in general, municipal broadband implementations, and broadband technologies, see the More Info section of the Broadband Study page.