Ed Negus, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Prairie City, has a doctor’s appointment at the VA clinic in Burns, 70 miles away.

But instead of making the long drive down Highway 395 to see his health care provider, he just pops into the John Day Elks Lodge 13 miles up Highway 26, where a small office behind the bar is equipped with a smart TV and a laptop with a high-speed internet connection that allows him to talk to his doctor as if they were in the same room.

Negus is among the dozens of Grant County veterans who use the telehealth link, provided through a partnership between the Elks and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for routine health care appointments that used to require a three-hour round trip to the Burns clinic — or a seven-hour round trip to the VA hospital in Boise.

“This is great for us,” Negus said. “This helps out a bunch.”

What makes the program work is fast, reliable internet service — the kind of service that has only been available in this isolated Eastern Oregon community for a few years now and is still lacking in more remote corners of the state.

But that may not be true for too much longer. Fueled by a massive infusion of federal funding, Oregon is launching a major push to expand the infrastructure needed to make a broadband internet connection available to every household in the state.

It’s all part of an ambitious initiative dubbed Internet for All, a $65 billion undertaking with the aim of ensuring that, by the year 2030, every American has access to reliable high-speed internet service for work, education and health care.

“It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever,” President Joe Biden said in a 2023 speech touting the program. “Because for today’s economy to work for everybody, internet access is just as important as electricity or water or other basic services.”

Bridging the digital divide

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of being able to work, learn and hold meetings online — and the consequences for those who lacked the ability to do so, many of them living in remote, rural areas.

The federal government responded by pouring money into a nationwide effort to extend broadband capability to an estimated 8.5 million localities that commercial internet service providers had steered clear of because of the high cost of building infrastructure and the low density of potential customers.

As of late 2022, Oregon’s share of that federal largesse was $895.7 million, according to information on the Internet for All government website. The job of overseeing how that money is spent falls to the Oregon Broadband Office, housed in Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency.

“That aspirational goal of internet for all is really the goal — that’s the expectation of Congress, that’s the expectation of the White House,” Business Oregon spokesperson Nathan Buehler said. “It’s got three priorities that kind of became big issues during COVID and that is work, education and health care.”

There are two primary programs set up to make that goal a reality, Buehler said.

“The first is the ARPA CPF (the American Rescue Plan’s Capital Projects Fund),” he said. “That program is administered by the Treasury in response to what we saw during COVID. So, that one is $10 billion nationally and Oregon is getting $157 million.

“The second federal program is called the BEAD program,” Buehler added. “It stands for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment. That one is $42.5 billion nationally. And Oregon’s award amount is $688.9 million.”

There are several other federal programs funneling money to the state for internet connectivity.

So far, for instance, Oregon has received about $25 million through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, which aims to extend broadband on tribal lands. The state has also been awarded $24 million from the Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure program, which connects local fiber optic networks to major trunk lines, and $782,000 through the Digital Equity Act, which funds digital literacy programs and other efforts to bring the benefits of the internet to underserved communities.

Some of these programs are already up and running in the state, with the most recent addition being the ARPA Capital Projects Fund. The portal to apply for CPF grants in Oregon opened on March 25 and will continue accepting applications until April 25.

Others, most notably the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, are still being set up. Activities such as a challenge process and a subgrantee selection process will start this year.

“For the BEAD program, there are a number of hurdles that we have to get over before we can even get access to those funds,” Buehler said, but he added that the program is still on track to deliver results.

“We will run a grant program that pushes money out the door on a reimbursable basis to the eligible recipients,” he said. “It doesn’t come to Oregon as an earmark. As a matter of fact, states and U.S. territories are required to effectively apply for these funds.”

Grant applicants will have to have some skin in the game as well. Subgrantees, for instance, will have to provide at least 25% of a project’s cost in matching funds.

With that in mind, the Oregon Broadband Office’s analysis shows that BEAD funds will likely be sufficient to fund fiber-to-the-premises to the majority of unserved and underserved locations in the state. The office’s data suggests there is a business case, with between 75% and 90% of unserved and underserved locations, for applicants to request funding for fiber at a level that will be equal to the funds available.

That said, Buehler added, Business Oregon will have to account for how every dime of BEAD money is spent.

“And this will be effectively a line-by-line accounting for how we’re going to spend all $688.9 million and how we’re going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000 to 150,000 locations in Oregon connected,” he said.

Laying cable

But while the BEAD program is still getting off the ground, numerous efforts to extend high-speed internet to underserved parts of the state are well underway.

For instance, in 2022, Rally Networks (formerly Oregon Telephone Corp.) was awarded a $20.5 million package of loans and grants by the U.S Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program. The company is in the process of laying fiber optic cable that will provide broadband internet access to 1,163 people, 41 businesses, 70 farms and four educational facilities in Baker, Grant and Malheur counties.

A separate $6 million grant, awarded in 2020, funded a partnership between Rally and the Grant County Digital Network Coalition to bring broadband to the Grant County towns of Seneca, Canyon City, Long Creek and Monument and the Wheeler County community of Spray. That project was expected to connect 418 households, 22 businesses, 22 farms, three schools and two fire stations, according to information provided by Sen. Ron Wyden’s office.

Markus Bott, vice president of operations with Rally Networks, said the company currently has several different projects going on in Oregon, including several that are waiting on environmental clearance before they can proceed.

“The Forest Service, the BLM and the State Historic Preservation Office, all those agencies kind of weigh in on routes and things like that in those projects,” Bott said.

In Eastern Oregon, he estimated Rally has placed around 200 miles of fiber in the last year, connecting toward the Boise area.

“As part of our ReConnect, we’ve put in about 50 miles out of 90 total in the Long Creek and Seneca areas,” Bott said.

Altogether, Bott said, the projects will help bring high-speed internet to around 2,000 previously unserved residents in Eastern Oregon.

Tribal projects

Other federal grant programs specifically target the digital divide in Indian Country.

In 2022, for instance, the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program awarded a $15.5 million grant to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Wyden’s office said. The money was expected to bring broadband fiber to 342 unserved households on the reservation in Umatilla and Union counties.

The need for broadband services varies depending on where you are on the reservation, said Bruce Zimmerman, economic and development tax administrator for the tribes. Some areas have decent service while others have poor, intermittent or no service.

“One of the goals is to provide service throughout the reservation,” Zimmerman said. “In other words, we want all the households eventually to be able to interconnect into good, high-speed, reliable internet broadband services.”

Having that connection, he said, will help tribal members in a variety of ways, from telemedicine to distance learning to operating small businesses from their homes.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded the tribes a separate grant for technical assistance. The $250,000, Zimmerman said, will provide the tribes with technical assistance to help manage their expanding broadband network.

“For example, what I refer to as a cost recovery system,” he said. “So when we build our rate structure — in other words how much the customer pays, the households pay — we understand how much of that rate has to include a reserve or a portion within that rate to make sure that there’s sufficient funding for the current operation and maintenance functions as well as there’s money set aside for capital reinvestment into the system. So, as time goes on, as assets need repair or become outdated, they can be replaced so that the (network) will continue to provide reliable service.”

Independent efforts

In some rural areas of the state, nonprofits have taken a different approach to providing high-speed connectivity to those who need it.

One example is the Grant County CyberMill, a public benefit nonprofit funded through government grants and private donations. In the last three years, the organization has set up fully furnished internet cafes in Seneca and Prairie City.

Each location has several computers, WiFi, a conference room with videoconferencing capabilities and work spaces for students, remote workers, digital entrepreneurs or anyone else who needs high-speed internet but can’t afford or access it.

“Seneca had zero opportunity for connectivity, whereas Prairie City had some connectivity but folks had to afford it or have devices,” said Didgette McCracken, one of the nonprofit’s board members.

Access to the facilities is based on membership. Grant County CyberMill currently has 680 members so far, but that number could grow in coming years as the organization expands — plans call for four more locations around the county.

Even with the push to extend high-speed internet access to private homes in remote rural areas, McCracken thinks the need for facilities like the CyberMills will continue because there will always be some people who can’t afford to pay for the service or the devices to use it.

Embracing the power

And then there are organizations like the Elks and their partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide telehealth services for veterans like Ed Negus.

“In the past year, we’ve done 60 veterans that did not have to go to Burns or Boise,” said Bob Van Voorhis, who helps manage the telehealth program for the John Day Elks Lodge and also serves as a volunteer bus driver for the free transportation program that takes vets to out-of-town doctor’s appointments.

“But that’s just part of what we do here as far as high-speed internet,” added Van Voorhis, a Vietnam vet who retired to Grant County after a long civilian career in the computer industry.

Once a month, he said, the lodge uses its broadband connection to host a virtual meeting of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3597, which serves both Grant and Harney counties. That means VFW members in Burns can save themselves the drive to John Day, but it’s still a long haul for Grant County members in remote locales like Long Creek and Monument or Harney County members in places like Crane.

Reliable broadband internet access, Van Voorhis said, would be a real boon to isolated communities like those.

“You have to understand the power (of this technology),” he said, “and embrace it.”