The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) has announced its first Broadband Community Profile, designed to reveal the economic and social impact of fiber broadband on rural communities in North America. The study, conducted by Futuriom Research, shows that Douglas County, Oregon, served by ISP Douglas Fast Net (DFN), has successfully used fiber optic broadband to create jobs, improve quality of life, invest in the future and even fight forest fires. It also generates approximately $28 million in revenue or savings annually.
"Fiber optic broadband has been a game changer for our community. It has helped our customers lower their costs, our hospitals improve care, our municipalities lower costs and enabled students of all ages to participate in online learning, and we know it also plays a key role in helping us keep some of our largest employers in the region and attract new businesses and industries to our markets." The DFN CEO said
In late 2000, the first fiber optic service connection was provided to local medical centers in Roseburg, including Mercy Medical Center and VA Roseburg Health Care System. By 2003, residential service was added, and by 2005, DFN rolled out fiber connections to most major institutions, including Roseburg's schools, hospitals and government offices.Fiber brings benefits to area hospitals, helping to streamline the sharing of medical records and information, thereby improving patient care. In schools, Fiber supports distance learning programs that proved critical for K-12 students during the pandemic and also enabled local community colleges to create online courses for adult continuing education. In a unique application, DFN has provided fiber to the local school's wildfire command center to support firefighter use in emergency situations and for personal use only. While DFN strung the fiber optics, the wildfire team also used pole-top cameras to replace the old manned fire towers. These cameras initially helped locate fires and track the progress of extinguishing flames.
To date, DFN has deployed 2,799 miles of fiber in Douglas County for more than 12,531 customers and nearly one-third of the local population. dFN plans to significantly expand its network coverage in the near term while providing 10G symmetric service. Over the past two decades, it has added to its network through organic growth and acquisitions to bring fiber broadband to more people in the region. The company leverages technology and services from industry leaders Ciena, Juniper Networks, Corning, Adtran and PLP.
Douglas Fast Net has a long history of innovation, leveraging a fiber backbone driven by existing electric service cooperatives and was one of the first ISPs in the state to offer gigabit service and is now moving to 10 G. This broadband community profile will set a great example for other communities looking to make the same progress.
DFN is a subsidiary of Douglas Electric Cooperative (DEC). Since the initial deployment of fiber, DEC has leveraged its fiber infrastructure to equip all of its substations with monitoring and data collection and advanced metering infrastructure technologies. These smart grid protocols automatically control and monitor remote systems. They are also a precursor to the more complete smart grid capabilities of the future, which will require distribution automation where the entire grid is automatically regulated by sensors and monitors. This is the next step in a plan to significantly reduce the cost of providing electric service in Douglas County.
