Oregon Broadband Initiative

Keenwire’s executives formed Greenwire Broadband and the Oregon Broadband Initiative.  Greenwire garnered exceptional support for the Round Two grant application for statewide Oregon ($189M). The statewide initiative, which was started 6 weeks prior to the deadline, ended up with support from nearly every legislator in Oregon, half the counties, all libraries, schools and emergency management for over 180 substantial letters of support.

The Oregon Broadband Initiative (OBI) would provide the first ever ubiquitous middle-mile broadband Internet backbone to un-served and underserved communities in rural Oregon. The proposed funded service area spans over 91% of Oregon’s land area (28 rural counties) and 41% of the population which includes 183 Census Designated Places (CDP) and 813 populated places plus additional populations in rural areas of “metro” Oregon counties. GIS analysis results in coverage of 2,100 critical and/or core community facilities while passing 541,145 households and 1.36 million people across 87,359 square miles. Based on Whitehouse stimulus job calculation formulas, this project is slated to create 1,700 direct and indirect jobs for Oregon.

OBI would deliver affordable, reliable, ubiquitous wholesale middle-mile broadband at fiber-like bandwidths up to and exceeding 300Mbps. High bandwidth service plans for middle-mile connections would be available to the public and private sectors begin at 10Mbps with the potential up to scale over 1Gbps in certain areas. Public entities would receive a typical 50% discount on services, as well as the ability to provide suitable in-kind contributions to the expansion of OBI initiatives. In addition Greenwire have committed to providing free lifetime Internet to all 95 public libraries across the PFSA starting at 100Mbps and continuing to grow as the Internet grows. We see libraries and community colleges as vital to this nation’s future.