KINGS VALLEY — In the evolving world of digital technology, internet connectivity has grown beyond cool streaming services and keeping up with family and friends through social media. Many of Benton County’s rural residents, such as those in Kings Valley, are well aware of the digital divide.
Fast, reliable service could be important for healthcare reasons with telehealth appointments becoming more popular. Since the pandemic, schools have trended in the direction of digital educational materials and students need access. Countless other situations exist from staying on top of personal banking to applying for a job.
Pioneer Connect, a Philomath-based internet and phone service provider, celebrated Wednesday the launch of a massive project that intends to close the connectivity gap in rural areas. With Beazell Memorial Forest serving as the backdrop and log trucks roaring by on Kings Valley Highway, the company’s general manager, Jim Rennard, said the rural-focused project will “bring fiber to homes in places where no one would dare to go.”
Pioneer Connect received a $24.9 million grant in 2022 out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program. The company provided an $8.3 million match. The federal program selects grant and loan recipients for the purpose of filling in those gaps in high-speed internet access.
“This project is a $33 million project. It’s going to bring fiber to 1,528 locations,” Rennard told an audience of residents, employees and contractors. “We’re going to be building 278 miles of backbone fiber — that’s not counting the drops to the customers, the people who actually use the service, and there’s additional fiber with that. So this is a fairly large project.”
The fiber-to-the-home connectivity project, which actually got underway last month, includes parts of Benton, Lincoln and Polk counties. North Sky Communications was brought in as the construction contractor.
“To kind of put that in perspective numbers wise, at the time we applied for the grant, Pioneer had about $70 million of total investment in their network,” Rennard said. “So this one project is 40%, 50% the size of the company’s construction at the time. We’ve got another $25 million grant that’s in process for another part of our service area, got a second $20 million grant that we’re negotiating with the state still and two other pending grant applications for another $5 million or $6 million.”
A fourth round of ReConnect program funding will cover 1,628 locations and 172 miles of fiber backbone in Benton, Lane and Lincoln counties. And then a combination of a fifth round of ReConnect funds along with money out of the state’s Broadband Deployment Program will involve 1,259 locations and 90 miles of fiber backbone in parts of Benton, Lane and Lincoln counties.
“It’s this kind of funding that is allowing us to bring fiber to the most remote parts of our study area and every member of our community,” Rennard said.
The current project’s funding began with Pioneer Connect’s submission of application documents in March 2022. Approval followed and the final paperwork was signed that same year in December. Engineering and design took 15 months, more approvals had to get worked out and then contract negotiations occurred.
“This is the largest of the ReConnect projects under this grant program in the state and it’s extensive and it’s that way because of how rural the areas are that Pioneer serves,” said David Krantz, Rural Utility Services general field representative. “We’ve been working hard and diligently to bring this funding into these rural communities and our job is to help them with that funding and get it to the folks that deserve it — and your communities deserve it.”
Rennard said many folks in places like Kings Valley are operating on slow internet speeds.
“It’s not necessarily that great,” Rennard said. “Some people actually have pretty decent speeds but they’re few and far between. Most people I would say have less than 25/3.”
In the world of internet terminology, 25 Mbps (megabits per second) download speed with 3 Mbps upload speed is considered to be a minimum standard for basic home internet. Connecting several devices, watching high-definition streaming video and such requires faster speeds.
Krantz made mention of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, a law out of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that provided low-cost loans to install electrical systems in rural areas.
“Who would have thought that almost 100 years ago in Congress’s infinite wisdom … that they would pass a law that would still be relevant today to provide these types of services for rural communities to bridge the gap, to make everything equal from urban areas to rural areas so you have the same access,” Krantz said. “And that was the theme behind it — not only for electrification but for communication.”
The project will be completed in two phases.
“The first phase is scheduled to be completed by the end of June of 2025,” Rennard said. “The second phase is just in the early stages of getting started and if I remember the schedule … it should be done by the end of ’25.”
Later while answering questions from the audience, Brad Madison, Pioneer Connect’s director of network operations, said Kings Valley should be 100% online before June.
The event Wednesday morning attracted a little more than two dozen people, including State Sen. Dick Anderson (R-Lincoln City).
