By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
YACHATS – One of the area’s largest communications providers is seeking support for a $3.8 million project to bring high-speed broadband internet to up to 180 residences in a 12-mile stretch between Yachats and Florence.
Pioneer Connect, the Philomath-based internet and telephone cooperative, is applying for its third U.S. Department of Agriculture grant under the federal government’s 4-year-old broadband “ReConnect” program. In 2022, the agency spent $1.67 billion to help fund 105 rural or tribal projects across the United States.
The cooperative’s latest proposal would center on the Tenmile area six miles south of Yachats. It is seeking support from local residents and Yachats-area businesses and organizations as part of its application, said Tanya Howie, Pioneer’s marketing manager.
Under Pioneer’s Tenmile proposal, the USDA would provide a $3.23 million grant and the cooperative provide the remaining $570,000.
But the population served would be tiny – 60 new and 120 existing customers — compared with Pioneer’s 6,800 broadband customers in Lincoln, Benton and Polk counties.
“It’s our strategy to get fiber to all of our customers in our district, but without these grants it would not be feasible,” Pioneer Connect general manager Jim Rennard told YachatsNews.
Pioneer received a $24.9 million USDA grant in 2022 to couple with a $8.3 million loan to replace its copper network with a fiber network to serve more than 1,500 residences and businesses in rural areas of Benton and Lincoln counties over the next five years. In 2021 it received a $3 million USDA grant for a $3.7 million project to install fiber connections in the Triangle Lake, Deadwood, Horton and Blachly areas. Both those projects are in the planning or contracting stages.
Pioneer is using its own resources to bring broadband to 3,000 homes and businesses in the Philomath area and has just started working on a $1.6 million broadband project to serve 560 homes and businesses in downtown Waldport.
Rennard said Tenmile-area customers served by its copper lines have broadband speeds of 25 megabits into their homes and 3 megabits going out. That limits internet connectivity for everything from searching the world wide web to online meetings, medical appointments, online schooling and gaming.
The new fiber network would have a base service of 100 megabits into homes and 100 megabits going out, Rennard said.
“Our network is outdated for today’s needs,” he said.
The application to the USDA does not include Pioneer’s customers in Yachats proper, which still mostly has copper lines for internet and phone.
“Should Pioneer be successful in winning this grant, we will be able to leverage these new facilities and accelerate our ability to extend fiber to more of our members, including Yachats proper,” Howie said.
The Tenmile application is due at the end of June with a decision in 4-6 months, Howie said.
As part of the grant, Pioneer needs to find or develop a “community center” in the Tenmie area for at least two years that people can access the internet for free. It would have 10 workstations.
In Triangle Lake, the cooperative is placing a small trailer near a school for that use, Rennard said.
If awarded, Rennard said Pioneer will need six months to engineer the project – the terrain between Yachats and Florence is very challenging – and then up to two years for contractors to complete it.
“It will be underground where possible and overhead where its cost prohibitive,” said Rennard.
Pioneer is a 72-year-old member-controlled cooperative that has pivoted away from focusing on telephone services to providing internet broadband, which can include phones. In addition to its 6,800 broadband customers, it has 9,000 voice/telephone customers – down from a peak of 16,000 more than 10 years ago, Rennard said.
“We’re doing OK businesswise because we’ve moved into broadband,” Rennard told YachatsNews. “And that’s why it’s important to upgrade our network to bring better speed to customers.”