As we all have learned during the COVID pandemic, access to affordable, high-speed internet connection is crucial for every resident and business in the Columbia River Gorge — for communication, information, education, healthcare, business and economic activity and to stay connected.
It was a lesson learned in the Gorge and across the country in the 1930s, when farmers realized how critical electricity was to their future. To address this challenge, rural electrification efforts began and people’s utility districts and electrical coops were formed. We are now entering an era of the rural “broadbandification,” as Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege has termed it.
We invite every resident and business in all five Gorge counties in Oregon and Washington to help us get ready by completing the Broadband Speed Test and Survey this summer at bit.ly/Speed-Survey.
With passage of the $1.2 trillion federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Biden, more than $65 billion will become available over the next five years to expand broadband access and affordability. We want communities on both sides of the Columbia River to be ready, and these survey results will be imperative.
Here in Wasco County, QLife was established with foresight in 2002 to create a 17-mile fiber optic loop through The Dalles. Our goal was to enhance the region’s economic development efforts with a reliable, cost effective, open access link to the Bonneville Power Administration’s fiber.
We have now expanded our vision and want every address in Wasco County to enjoy a higher quality of life and participate in education, healthcare, and the economy through a high speed internet connection at a price point that they can afford.
Our mission is to facilitate access to scalable telecommunication infrastructure to enable affordable broadband-level internet across Wasco County, much like a public utility.
A new Wasco County Broadband Action Team (BAT) has also been formed this year by the Mid-Columbia Economic Development District and Wasco County Economic Development Commission.
The BAT is an action-oriented team working together to increase broadband access and use, defining community broadband needs and goals, identifying gaps in service through speed testing and other data collection, supporting infrastructure investments and getting projects shovel-ready, and connecting local communities with outside resources to meet their needs.
The region continues to be served by a similar group that works with all five counties, called the Gorge Broadband Consortium that was formed in 2015.
There are 36 counties in Oregon and 39 in Washington and they’re all wanting greater access to affordable, high-speed broadband. The five here in the Gorge want to be at the starting line, ready to go much like the world-class athletes we just saw at the World Track & Field Championship relays in Eugene — ready to go, working together and fast, to produce gold medal winning results for our citizenry.
None of our citizens or communities in the Gorge should be left behind. Ready, set … broadband!
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Carrie Pipinich is deputy director of economic development at the Mid-Columbia Economic Development District and convenor of the Wasco County Broadband Action Team and Columbia Gorge Broadband Consortium. Lee Weinstein is president of QLife, a collaborative effort of public entities in Wasco County that began in 2002.
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