LOCAL NEWS
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
HeRMIsTOnHeRaLd.COM • A3
PLAYING A WAITING GAME
business in Adams, Weston
and Athena this year. Inter-
net access opens up oppor-
tunities for the town’s 350
residents to see a doctor
from another city over video
chat, telecommute to a high-
er-paying job, shop online
for items not found in town
or get a college degree with-
out leaving home.
“Adams is a very small
rural town, and this will
expand our borders,” she
said.
The town currently
has only a single inter-
net provider with what she
described as very slow and
unreliable wireless internet.
“Any time we have
weather conditions it will go
out,” she said.
Jennifer Spurgeon, mayor
of Weston, also described
struggles in her town of
almost 650 residents, some
of whom can’t event access
the unreliable wireless inter-
net due to geographical
constraints.
“It’s hard to quantify
the time lost to the slow-
speed internet,” she said,
noting that her husband, a
real estate appraiser, spends
many hours of his job wait-
ing on documents to upload
or download.
Athena mayor Rebecca
Schroeder echoed those
thoughts.
“It’s a real positive,” she
said of faster internet. “Peo-
ple can work in a small
town, live in a small town
and be part of the fabric of
the community and yet take
their business to the next
level.”
Farmers also benefit from
rural internet access, as the
technology allows them to
tap into precision irriga-
tion, self-driving tractors,
long-distance monitoring of
field conditions and other
cutting-edge
agricultural
technology to boost produc-
tivity and efficiency.
Franell said that EOT is
starting out with fiber-to-
home connections in East-
ern Umatilla County, but in
the future the company will
likely extend wireless inter-
net outside city limits for
agricultural use as well.
He said he plans to com-
plete a survey of residents of
Athena, Weston and Adams
to gauge their internet lit-
eracy, then provide some
classes on how they can
better use their new, faster
internet connection.
Huawei blacklist
could put a damper
on progress for
rural broadband
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
In a storage room at East-
ern Oregon Telecom, a wide
stack of cardboard boxes
each bear the flower-shaped
Huawei logo.
The equipment inside
was originally destined to
become part of EOT’s grow-
ing broadband network.
But after the Trump admin-
istration placed the Chi-
nese-based Huawei on a
trade blacklist, the equip-
ment may be destined to stay
in the box.
Eastern Oregon Tele-
com CEO Joseph Franell
and other internet service
providers who rely on Hua-
wei’s inexpensive prod-
ucts are waiting for clarifi-
cation on what the blacklist
means. There has been talk
of forcing providers to not
only stop installing new
Huawei equipment, but also
rip out and replace what
they already have in their
systems.
“There are lots of ambig-
uous mandates out there,”
Franell said.
It started in April 2018,
when the Federal Com-
munications Commission
posted a notice of proposed
rule-making, signaling the
government was consid-
ering a restriction of cer-
tain types of gear from
Huawei based on wor-
ries that the Chinese com-
pany could pose a national
security threat. Later Con-
gress included language in
the 2019 National Defense
Authorization
excluding
technology from Huawei
and ZTE, another Chinese
tech company, from all gov-
ernment systems.
Last week President Don-
ald Trump issued an execu-
tive order banning purchase
of communications equip-
ment from companies con-
sidered by the administration
to pose a national security
threat, and the Department
of Commerce placed Hua-
wei on a trade blacklist. In a
White House speech Trump
called Huawei “very dan-
gerous” but also said that he
could see the tech company
staff photos by e.J. Harris
Eastern Oregon Telecom CEO Joseph Franell shows one of the company’s cable modem termination systems they purchased
from Huawei.
Eastern Oregon Telecom CEO Joseph Franell has been an
outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s ban on
technology made by Huawei.
included in a trade deal.
Franell said many Hua-
wei products are 40%
cheaper than he can get any-
where else, and they some-
times makes products he
can’t buy from a U.S.-based
company. He showed off a
cable modem termination
system that he pushed Hua-
wei to start exporting to the
United States after seeing
one during a tour of a facil-
ity in China.
“Cisco makes cable
modem termination sys-
tems, but they don’t make
them like this,” he said.
“These are remarkably
scaleable. [Huawei] brought
this equipment to the United
States on my request, and
now I don’t know if I’ll get
to keep it.”
In addition, he said, Hua-
wei equipment is the most
reliable in his network. In
the past five years he has
only had one equipment fail-
ure from a Huawei piece —
a level of reliability he said
he has not been able to find
elsewhere.
There are concerns within
the government, however,
that infusing crucial rural
networks with technology
from China could open up
those networks to spying and
sabotage via “back doors”
installed in the hardware.
“The U.S. Government
has determined that there is
reasonable cause to believe
Boxes of electronic compo-
nents from the Chinese tele-
communication giant Hua-
wei sit idle in a store room .
that Huawei has been
involved in activities con-
trary to the national security
or foreign policy interests
of the United States,” the
Department of Commerce
report read.
Franell
acknowledged
spying is a possibility — the
United States was caught
installing its own back doors
in exported technology in
the past, and it stands to rea-
son other countries would
employ similar techniques.
He said if there were ever
any evidence that were hap-
pening with Huawei, he
would move to purge the
risk from his network with-
out waiting for the govern-
ment to give the direction.
If the government forces
rural internet providers
to replace all the Huawei
equipment in their systems,
Franell said it wouldn’t put
EOT out of business.
“For us, it would be a dis-
traction,” he said. “But for
some other companies it
could be catastrophic.”
Replacing
$500,000
worth of Huawei equipment
would likely cost about $1.2
million for a company to
purchase more expensive
parts from other compa-
nies, reengineer their system
and expend the labor for the
installations, he estimated.
Even if the government
reimburses them afterward,
he said, “If you’re into it for
$20 million, where do you
get the money?”
It could easily put some
rural providers out of
business.
Importance of rural internet
Eastern Oregon’s most
rural cities know the strug-
gle it can be to get the inter-
net service so important to
modern life, and the last
thing they want to do is go
backward in that effort.
Debbie Sutor, mayor of
Adams, said she is excited
that Eastern Oregon Tele-
com will be extending fiber
internet to every home and
City council adopts new budget $1 million smaller
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
The Hermiston City
Council adopted a budget
on Monday night that was
roughly $1 million smaller
than the current fiscal year,
thanks to several large con-
struction projects that are
now off the books.
Revenue increases from
the city’s growth were bal-
anced by a 25% increase
in costs associated with the
Public Employees Retire-
ment System.
Mayor David Drotz-
mann said the state needs
to get PERS spending under
control soon, before the
day comes when the city is
forced to make cuts to ser-
vices such as parks or police.
He said the city was lucky to
have increases in property
tax revenue to assist in cov-
ering the rising costs.
“A lot of other rural cit-
ies aren’t that fortunate,” he
said.
Beyond increased prop-
erty taxes, the city has turned
toward other ways to fund
projects. The adopted 2019-
20 budget included sev-
eral major water and sewer
projects, in part funded by a
March increase in water and
sewer rates.
While residents have been
encouraging each other on
social media to ask the city
council to rethink its utility
rate increases on Monday,
only one person actually
showed up to voice a com-
plaint. She said she had been
“shocked” to see her bill
almost double and was con-
cerned about the increase’s
impact on residents.
During time for council
comment at the end of the
meeting, councilor Rod Har-
din said he was sympathetic
to the problem, as his own
increase in his water bill has
caused him to rethink his
water usage habits.
“It’s a challenge, but see-
ing what we have on the
budget as far as water proj-
ects and sewer projects, it
needs to be done,” he said.
“I understand it, but it does
hurt.”
Before Monday’s regu-
lar meeting, city councilors
spent an hourlong work ses-
sion discussing the strategic
plan for the Eastern Oregon
Trade and Event Center.
They agreed that getting
water rights to the new fair-
grounds should be the top
priority, as it would feed
into other goals such as
landscaping.
Previously one of the
council’s top goals had
been creating an RV park at
the site that could rent out
spaces year-round and bring
in revenue to make EOTEC
self-sustaining. But after a
disagreement about where
the park should be located
derailed plans to complete
the park this summer, they
sent it to their EOTEC advi-
sory committee.
The committee is rec-
ommending that the city
do some minor upgrades
— limited electricity and
a dump station — to the
grassy area currently serv-
ing as an RV park during the
Umatilla County Fair, and
put plans to build a full RV
park next to the rodeo arena
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Councilor John Kirwan
supported moving the RV
park down on the strategic
plan’s goals list and mov-
ing a proposed multi-sport,
sports field area up the list.
He pointed out that no orga-
nizations had expressed
interest in helping fund an
RV park, but several entities
had already said they would
be willing to make a signif-
icant investment in fields
that could bring major tour-
naments for sports, such as
lacrosse, to Hermiston.
He and Drotzmann both
pointed out the economic
benefits of bringing in more
sports tournaments, and of
giving more of the commu-
nity a reason to feel owner-
ship over EOTEC.
Other councilors voiced
their own opinions about
what should work its way
up the priority list — Doug
Primmer said the city
needed to beef up its secu-
rity at EOTEC to protect
what was already invested,
while Jackie Myers said the
hard-to-find location needed
more signs pointing people
in the right direction.
Councilors also agreed
that a marketing plan, new
fair offices, landscaping and
more meeting space should
be high priorities in the stra-
tegic plan.
PET OF THE
W EEK
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She is a sweet cuddle bug who loves to hang out
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the water hose is one of her favorite things. Sally
has typical heeler tendencies so please research the
breed before filling out an application. She is kennel and
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SALLY
Mark Sargent, DVM • Brent Barton, DVM
Eugenio Mannucci, DVM, cVMA • Jana von Borstel, DVM, cVMA
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Hermiston
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