Did you know the City of Portland, Oregon, already owns and operates a fiber-optic broadband network? It’s called IRNE (Integrated Regional Network Enterprise), and despite having it in place Portlanders are forced to pay through the nose for internet access because of a lack of meaningful competition. Even after 24 years of IRNE, too many in PDX struggle to afford and access fast internet service in their homes and small businesses.<\/p>\n
EFF and local Electronic Frontier Alliance members, Personal TelCo Project<\/a> and Community Broadband PDX<\/a>, are calling on city council & mayoral candidates to sign a pledge to support an open-access business model, where the city owns and leases the “dark” fiber. That way services can be run by local non profits, local businesses, or community cooperatives. The hope is these local services can then grow to support retail service and meet the needs of more residents. <\/p>\n This change will only happen if we show our support, join the campaign today<\/a> to stay up to date and find volunteer opportunities.\u00a0 Also come out for fun and learning at The People\u2019s Digital Safety Fair<\/a> Saturday October 19th, for talks and workshops from the local coalition. Let\u2019s break the private ISP monopoly power in Portland!<\/p>\n Leading this campaign is Community Broadband PDX<\/a>, with the mission to \u2018guide Portlanders to create a new option for fast internet access: Publicly owned and transparently operated, affordable, secure, fast and reliable broadband infrastructure that is always available to every neighborhood and community.\u2019 According to Jennifer Redman, President, Board of Directors, and Campaign Manager of Community Broadband PDX, (who also formerly served as the Community Broadband Planning Manager in the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability with the City of Portland) when asked about the campaign to expand IRNE into affordable accessible internet for all Portlanders, she said:<\/p>\n \u201cExpanding access to the Integrated Regional Network Enterprise (IRNE) is the current campaign focus because within municipal government it is often easier to expand existing programs rather than create entirely new ones – especially if there is a major capital investment required. IRNE is staffed, there are regional partners and the program is highly effective. Yes it is limited in scope but there are active expansion plans.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Leveraging IRNE allows us to advocate for policies like \u201cDig Once Dig Smart\u201d every time the ground is open for any type of development in the City of Portland – publicly owned-fiber conduit must be included. The current governmental structure has made implementing these policies extremely difficult because of the siloed nature of how the City is run. For example, the water bureau doesn\u2019t want to be told what to do by the technology services bureau. This should significantly improve with our charter change. Currently the City of Portland really operates as a group of disparate systems that sometimes work together. I hope that under a real city manager, the City is run as one system.<\/p>\n IRNE already partners with Link Oregon<\/a> – which provides the \u201cretail\u201d network services for many statewide educational and other non-profit institutions.\u00a0 The City is comfortable with this model – IRNE builds and manages the dark fiber network while partners provide the retail or \u201clit” service. Let\u2019s grow local ISPs that keep dollars in Portland as opposed to corporate out-of-state providers like Comcast and Century Link.\u201d<\/p>\n The time is now to move Portland forward and make access to the publicly owned fiber optic network available to everyone. As explained by Russell Senior, President and member of the Board of Directors of Personal TelCo Project<\/a>, this would bring major economic and workforce development advantages to Portland:<\/p>\n \u201cOur private internet access providers exploit their power to gouge us all with arbitrary prices, because our only alternative to paying them whatever they ask is to do without. The funds we pay these companies ends up with far away investors, on the order of $500 million per year in Multnomah County alone. Much of that money could be staying in our pockets and circulating locally if we had access they couldn’t choke off.<\/p>\n I learned most of my professional skills from information I found on the Internet. I got a good job, and have a successful career because of the open source software tools that I received from people who shared it on the internet. The internet is an immense store of human knowledge, and ready access to it is an essential part of developing into a fruitful, socially useful and fulfilled person.\u201d<\/p>\n Portland is currently an island of expensive, privately owned internet service infrastructure, as every county surrounding Portland is building or operating affordable publicly owned and publicly available super-fast fiber-optic broadband networks. Fast internet access in Portland remains expensive and limited to neighborhoods that provide the highest profits for the few private internet service providers (ISPs). Individual prosperity and a robust local economy are driven by UNIVERSAL affordable access to fast internet service.\u00a0 A climate resilient city needs robust publicly owned and available fiber-optic broadband infrastructure. Creating a digitally equitable and just city is dependent upon providing access to fast internet service at an affordable cost for everyone. That is why we are calling city officials to take the pledge<\/a> that they will support open-access internet in Portland.<\/p>\n