Rural Broadband’s Only Hope: Thinking Outside the Box?

There are still areas that have nothing to tether them to the modern world at all. These areas are not just rural, but geographically challenging to traverse and connect. Oregon is one of these states. Geographically the eastern part of the state is cut off from the coast by the Cascade Mountains. It is under these conditions that Chief Information Officer Alex Pettit went to bat to improve rural broadband access in his state.  In 2012, he found that the state was paying $11 million a year for access to the Internet, so he collaborated with four state universities to buy nearly 2,300 miles of fiber-optic cable, hoping to create a faster, cheaper public network running to areas across the state.