Oregonian, The

Hillsboro’s (OR) publicly supported internet project aims to undercut its rivals on pricing and substantially outpace them in speed. The city council has set pricing for its forthcoming service, called HiLight, offering superfast gigabit service for $55 a month. That’s about half what Comcast charges for the same speeds. Hillsboro says it will offer speeds up to 4 gigabits for $300 a month, the same price as Comcast’s 2 gig plan. The first homes will be online early in 2020, according to the city, about a year behind the initial schedule.

As internet speeds continue to lag in rural parts of the state, Oregon lawmakers are contemplating a new fee on cellphone service to help pay for expanded broadband in remote and underserved communities. OR House Bill 2184 would raise about $10 million a year to fund broadband projects through grants and loans. Advocates say it would cost cellphone subscribers between $4 and $12 a year. The bill will face fierce opposition from the wireless industry, though, which says it will fight to keep OR cellphone fees low.

Portland (OR) residents enjoy some of the nation’s fastest Internet speeds, but newly released Census data shows rural parts of the state continue to lag way behind. In some communities, fewer than half of the homes have fast Internet service. “With the rural markets the state doesn’t do well – or as well,” said Joe Franell, chief executive of Eastern Oregon Telecom, a small Hermiston company serving residents and businesses in seven communities. Overall, the Census found 87 percent of Oregon households were broadband subscribers in 2017.

[Commentary] Oregonians may recall that Portland was on the front lines of defending an open internet when cable companies first planned high-speed "broadband" in the late 1990s.

You don't need a gig. That's the case Frontier Communications chief executive Maggie Wilderotter is making as Google Fiber readies a charge into the Portland (OR) area, perhaps as soon as 2015.

Frontier, which has had a monopoly on residential fiber in Portland's suburbs since acquiring Verizon's FiOS service in 2010, says Google is pitching something consumers don't understand, and don't need.