Rural Broadband Meeting Summary

Polk County

Broadband Meeting Summary

12/10/2019

Attending Organizations

USDA Rural Utility Service
Oregon Broadband Office
Alyrica
OnlineNW
SEDCOR
OSU Extension
MINET
PEAK
CONSUMER POWER
CenturyLink
City of Independence
Polk County Staff
Polk County BOC
Local Farmer 

Meeting Objectives

• Learn why Polk County conducted the rural broadband survey.
• Learn the results of responses to the survey.
• Identify what we can do as citizens, government agencies, and providers do to improve service.

Welcome

Craig Polk (Polk County Board of Commissioners) welcomed all to the meeting, reviewed our purpose for attending.  Craig expressed his interest in:

• addressing broadband access concerns that rural residents have
• facilitating ways to improve service and
• not becoming a rural broadband provider.

Introductions

All meeting attendees introduced themselves.

Survey Results

Dean Anderson (Polk County IT Director) presented the results of the rural broadband survey.  The survey had a widespread response from the public (32%).  Information Presented is available at:  http://arcg.is/0yiKju

Federal and State Opportunities

Chris Tamarin (Oregon Broadband Office) presented the states interest in improving broadband services to Rural Oregonians.  Chris’ slide show is accessible on the county web site. 

John Holman (USDA) presented summarized current and planned programs to assist in expanding rural broadband access.  The federal map can be downloaded from here (https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs/telecommunications-programs/telecom-maps).  The Reconnect program announcement for 2020 is here.

Facilitated Discussion

Dean Anderson facilitated a discussion with ISP representatives to identify opportunities and barriers to improving services to rural Polk County Residents.  Participants identified a number of barriers and opportunities to improving services to rural citizens as follows:

• There is more business than providers can handle.
• Providers could use help mapping areas of opportunity and local topography.
• A challenge for the providers is identifying the optimal speed the public is willing to pay for.
• ISP’s could look at propagating islands of service where appropriate
• Services could be expanded to rural areas by building out from urban service providers.
• The federal grant requirements may be loosened up in the next round to be announced in January/February.
• The state is looking at increasing funding in one of the bills that will be taken up by the legislature in the coming short session.
• It would be good to repeat the survey in a year or two to see if we have improved.
• Several ISP’s expressed interest in meeting one-on-one with Polk County Commissioners.
• Emergency Services manages a series of towers and is always interested in partnering with ISP’s.

Future Actions

• Polk County to meet with several rural ISP representatives
• Meet again in February to review new federal and state opportunities
• Polk County apply for grant to develop elevation data and a simple web application to assist in ISP’s in identifying new service opportunities.

 Interactive Report  http://arcg.is/0yiKju