Bill Gerski CEO of Eastern Oregon Telecom, Huawei and Joe Franell, said that broadband availability in rural areas, particularly in our rural communities, continues to be a leading issue of concern in our state.

As the Internet becomes critical in civic life, education, and economics pay a higher cost for their lack of accessibility. Rural residents should have access to the same high speed broadband that many urban residents receive.

Density, space and topography present overwhelming challenges in bringing broadband to rural areas. Generally residents only live too far from the required gear for DSL service, or the landscape isn’t appropriate for wireless connectivity. Satellite reception needs a clear view of specific areas of the heavens, which isn’t consistently heavily forested or feasible in mountainous areas.

The first build out of an FTTH network is the priciest part of the procedure. Yet, once finished, the price to add incremental bandwidth to satisfy consumer demand is not exceptionally high and on-going operational costs are low. Because of this, once the first fiber installation cost is recouped, fiber networks create substantial positive income and scale at minimal price to satisfy consumer demand.

Wireless networks might be great option for remote, low density regions, and their skill to offer freedom is a value that is tremendous. But as consumers require higher bandwidths for video services like YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu, wireless is not able to support it at acceptable price. As bandwidth requirements grow, wireless networks must be updated and cell sizes shrunk to manage more subscribers and higher bandwidths.

As subscribers’ demand for superior services keeps growing, while HFC design previously has been the basis for service increase and diversification, conventional systems are no longer cost effective. It’s becoming increasingly expensive to break through each consecutive bandwidth bottleneck in the HFC network that is conventional. The HFC network must migrate towards Digital HFC network that is distributed.