eventually connect all businesses and households through
fiber optics or coaxial cable.
According to a 2013 memo on EWEB dark-fiber leases,
“with the decline/collapse of the telecommunications
boom in late 2001/early 2002” the board abandoned its
plan for this network and a MetroNet and instead starting
leasing its fiber capacity to public and commercial entities.
A recent thread on the Eugene page of popular
networking site Reddit bemoans the loss of this system,
and one user points out that Chattanooga, Tennessee spent
$97 million building a fiber-optic network providing
residents of the city and surrounding rural areas with
high-speed low-cost internet — gigabit connections for
$69.99 — and it has already paid for itself.
EWEB, however, has not stopped working on fiber
optics, according to spokesman Joe Harwood. In 2010,
EWEB’s $1.6 million share of a grant LCOG received
from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program
(BTOP) allowed the utility to extend fiber-optic cable to
some schools and medical facilities.
The BTOP grant was a $8.3 million broadband
infrastructure grant to enhance the existing fiber-optic
backbone and add 124 miles of fiber-optic network to
deliver broadband capabilities in Lane, Douglas and
Klamath counties. The money came from the stimulus
bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009) and the goal was to bring 100 megabits per second
connections to more than 100 “anchor institutions”
such as medical centers, public safety entities, schools,
community colleges and libraries.
The project, which wrapped up in the fall of 2013,
“installed fiber in every city in Lane County with the
exception of Westfir and Dunes City,” Mecham of LCOG
says. Those last two were left out because “at the initial
SOURCE: BROADBAND.OREGON.GOV/STATEMAP
high-tech movement would only benefit towns along the I-5
corridor, not the small timber communities she represented.
The fiber itself is the least expensive component in
the effort, she says, so the question was what kind of
proposal could local communities make that would induce
the private company to lay dark fiber for them. Dark
fiber is simply fiber-optic cable that has not been lit up
— connected to the internet.
Communities from Coburg to Oakridge quickly adopted
ordinances to join the fiber consortiums and prepared
to trade right-of-way access for fiber. But Weeldreyer
says when the time came to negotiate — they were
thinking of asking for maybe six strands of fiber — the
telecommunications company responded “in true corporate
fashion, ‘We don’t need your right-of-way.’” The fiber route
would follow the railroad’s right-of-way, which is why
there is a major fiber-optic route running through Oakridge
and down to Klamath Falls.
Luckily, Weeldreyer says, Pam Berrian, telecommu-
nications program manager for the city of Eugene, found
that the city still controlled the right-of-way where the
railroad crosses High Street, since the street existed be-
fore the railroad.
Cities can charge fees for telecommunications companies
to use their rights-of-way, and while Weeldreyer says most
towns are reluctant to give up those moneymaking fees, this
time they offered to expedite the permit and let the company
have the right-of-way in exchange for 12 strands of fiber and
access points to members of the consortiums along the way.
The company, then called Pacific Fiber Link, faced
with a roadblock to its fiber optic network, agreed and,
Weeldreyer says, “For that magic moment in time I
witnessed government moving at the speed of the private
sector to benefit citizens along the route.”
SERVICE DELIVERED THROUGH FIBER OPTIC CABLE
Fast-Forward
Also back in 1999, EWEB (Eugene Water and
Electric Board) was working to install a fiber-optic
network as well. The utility laid 70 miles of “backbone”
cable, interconnecting 25 EWEB metro-area substations
and three BPA bulk power stations. It was designed
to have future connections with schools like the
University of Oregon, local governments and long-haul
telecommunications providers.
The EWEB board had a “telecommunications vision”
that it would develop a locally owned and managed high-
speed broadband network throughout Eugene that would
POPULATION DENSITY
time of the grant there were no anchor institutions that
would qualify.” He says, “It still burns me we didn’t get
Westfir and Dunes City.”
Mecham says the agency is also working with city
of Eugene and EWEB on “what we are calling a pilot
project to run fiber optics to a couple buildings downtown,
running fiber through the existing electrical system
from the Willamette Internet Exchange to the Broadway
Commerce Building and Woolworth Building.” Those
buildings were chosen, Mecham says, because of a high
concentration of software developers and other companies
that need fiber.
The downtown Willamette Internet Exchange, aka
WIX, is an internet “peering point,” Mecham says. Rather
than a data center that stores information, LCOG’s WIX
is where local private and public networks interact. The
internet isn’t really a “series of tubes,” Mecham says
(though the metaphor of a small pipe versus a large pipe
is useful in explaining how broadband speeds work), but
rather a series of fibers that can send an email message
in a microsecond. Instead of sending that information
through the networks to Seattle or Chicago before it gets
to a business across the street, a peering point lets local
networks interact close by. This infinitesimal increase in
speed may not affect an email, but it does affect someone
downloading a large file like a two-hour movie, he says.
Fiber in the Shire
The big companies like Sony that made up the Silicon
Forest are no longer in Lane County, but the Silicon Shire,
made up of smaller, up-and-coming tech businesses, has
taken its place, and it needs faster broadband.
Kiki Prottsman, founder of Thinkersmith, which
teaches entry-level computer science, and an ambassador
for Eugene’s Silicon Shire, says lack of access could stifle
growth. Tech companies are up against an airport that
lacks enough direct flights to places like Seattle and San
Francisco and a network that can’t sustain the transferring
of large files or multi-line video calls that can take the
place of in-person meetings. “In some businesses, a split
second makes the difference,” she says.
Prottsman says the need to expand broadband access
to tech companies and rural dwellers alike is up against
some tough barriers. Not only do finances constrict local
governments, but she says “cable- and phone-internet
people are worthy adversaries and want to make sure they
have all the cards to play.”
Weeldreyer would agree. She suspects she was a
victim of corporate espionage at a National Association
of Counties conference in 1999 when she went to give
a presentation on how other rural counties could use
the fiber-brokering right-of-way strategy to get fiber
broadband in their areas, and her handouts disappeared
from her hotel room and her computer presentation
vanished from her computer.
Prottsman says access to the internet is determined
by where you live and how much you can pay. “It’s just
crazy and limiting, and those citizens don’t have the same
opportunities,” she says of rural dwellers.
Bringing broadband access to the rural areas is “the
equivalent in our times of what rural electrification was in
the last century,” Kevin Matthews says.
It’s a question of money, Mecham points out. The
system the BTOP grant put into place means that once the
finances are available, somewhere like Oakridge can add
users. He gives the example of Veneta, where in order to
bring a call center to town, the city got the funding to run a
connection from the fiber cable the LCOG grant installed
to the building for the call center. He’s hoping the Eugene
pilot project will give an idea of how much it will cost to
install and light up more fiber in Eugene and look into
whether building owners are willing to “chip in for the
next round of fiber” or if public funding, such as urban
renewal money, could be used.
The internet is not the whole answer to balancing rural
and county budgets, Matthews says, but “it is absolutely
one of the keys to making that possible.”
How much do people care about making open access
to the internet possible? The FCC’s first public comment
period on net neutrality ended July 15 with 677,000
comments on its proposed rules for an “open internet” that
critics says will allow content companies to cut deals with
broadband providers for preferential treatment. A second,
60-day round of public comments on the issue started July
16. ■
For more information on the FCC and net neutrality go to fcc.gov/
openinternet and for more on the Regional Fiber Consortium’s work
go to connectingoregon.org.
eugeneweekly.com • July 17, 2014
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