Oregon’s Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative (CCEC) and its subsidiary Beacon Broadband (BBI) say they have completed the biggest fiber expansion project in the cooperative’s history, dramatically expanding affordable Internet access to thousands of previously unserved rural households in the Southern part of The Beaver State.
Cooperative officials say the six-year, $60 million project was the largest infrastructure investment in the cooperative's 88-year history. 7,000 of the co-op’s 14,000 electrical customers are now subscribed to broadband service after the deployment of 14,000 miles of fiber optic lines that have also streamlined maintenance and monitoring of the electrical grid.
Originally, a CCEC engineering feasibility study estimated the build would cost $45 million, though CCEC’s board later revised the capital budget to $60 million to reflect steeper construction costs due to the rugged, rural coastal terrain.
To fund the project, the CCEC Board authorized BBI to secure up to $60 million in private borrowing through CoBank.
It was supplemented by several state and federal grants, including a 2020 $14.1 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant, a $19 million grant from the Oregon Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) to expand high-speed Internet access to over 1,200 addresses in rural Curry and Coos counties, and a $7 million USDA Rural Development grant.
"At its core, this project was about serving our members and investing in the future of the communities we call home," says Daniel Loshbaugh, president of the Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative Board of Directors. "The network expands access to reliable broadband, while also strengthening the electric system our members depend on every day. That's the cooperative difference. We make investments based on long-term community benefit, not short-term returns."
First created in 1939, the Coos-Curry Cooperative is one of over 200 U.S. electrical cooperatives leveraging their century-old experience in rural electrification to bring affordable fiber access to long-neglected parts of the country – markets that in most cases were left behind by regional telecom monopolies disinterested in improving affordable access.
The cooperative’s fiber wing, dubbed Beacon Broadband, was first launched back in 2021, and offers locals fiber-optic broadband at three tiers of service: a symmetrical 500 megabits per second (Mbps) tier for $50 a month; a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) tier for $85 a month; and a symmetrical 2 Gbps tier for $120 a month.
A December 2018 survey of the cooperative’s members found that 17 percent of the co-op’s members had no Internet access whatsoever. Another 15 percent only had substandard broadband access that failed to meet the federal definition for minimum broadband speeds.
Unlike many regional Oregon private telecom monopolies, Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative’s fiber tiers don’t feature usage caps, long-term contracts, or hidden fees.
The cooperative’s website maintains a construction status map tracking past, current, and future fiber deployment plans.
Inline image of Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative's Connected Senior Program courtesy of Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative Facebook page
