PEAK News

Making Remote Learning Possible in Rural Oregon

–Case Study

The pandemic served as a perfect acid test for connectivity around the world: bottlenecks and points of weakness in infrastructure were quickly exacerbated as everyone moved almost overnight to remote work and learning. In the Mid-Willamette Valley area in Oregon, the decades-old, substandard home Internet infrastructure stood out in stark relief very quickly. Local K-12 students were particularly affected.

 

Theresa Peltier, a resident of the area, was shocked at the difficulty her son Hank was having with his remote homework assignments. He would spend hours of extra time just trying to log in to get his work done.

 

Julie Ragan, a teacher for the local Lebanon Community School District, knew of kids in deep rural areas that didn’t have Internet access at all. “Rural kids were being left behind,” she notes disquietingly.

 

As an organization committed to caring for the communities it serves and working to improve quality of life, PEAK Internet had to find a way to make big changes to the local infrastructure in its Mid-Willamette Valley service area.

 

Click Here to Read the Full Case Study 

PEAK Internet to install fiber optic lines in Lebanon

Dec 13, 2022

ALBANY — Linn County Commissioners Roger Nyquist, Sherrie Sprenger and Will Tucker approved a tax-exempt bond program that will help PEAK Internet run more than 101 miles of high-speed fiber optic lines in the city of Lebanon, greatly increasing Internet speed opportunities for homes and businesses alike.

 

The project will also affect users who live on Linn County properties interspersed within Lebanon’s boundaries. The city of Lebanon has already approved the project.

<p”>PEAK Internet CEO Rick Petersen said the company will use up to $47 million secured by tax exempt bonds issued by the Arizona Industrial Development Authority.

 

Board Chairman Nyquist was concerned that the project might encumber Linn County residents in some fashion, but Petersen said the bonds will be repaid through user fees. Linn County residents will not be responsible for any of the debt except via monthly user fees for those who sign up for the high-speed service.

 

PEAK Internet is owned by Consumers Power of Philomath.

According to information provided to the commissioners, about 45% of the fiber optic lines will be buried and 55% will be installed on Pacific Power’s above-ground poles.

 

The project will provide one gigabit fiber connection to every customer on the network.

 

PEAK Internet has been working toward this goal since 2018 and has previously installed fiber optic lines in the Lebanon area to about 350 customers.

 

The new project’s timeline was slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Petersen said, but a contractor is in place and ready to begin work after the first of the year.

 

Media contact: Alex Paul, Linn County Communications Officer, 541-967-3825 or email apaul@co.linn.or.us.

Fiber Internet coming to Lebanon households

By Alex Powers of the Albany Democrat Herald
Nov 23, 2022

Lebanon will be first in the mid-Willamette Valley to get enterprise-level fiber-optic internet to every home in city limits.

 

The city signed an agreement Nov. 9 with Corvallis-based PEAK Internet that will allow the company to start covering Lebanon in fiber lines in 2023.

 

PEAK has planned for nearly a decade to bring fiber to Lebanon, installing dozens of miles of fiber lines in separate projects to Lacomb and Sweet Home. Supporters say the infrastructure could attract businesses and spur economic growth.

PEAK Internet’s investment in fiber Internet expands rural growth opportunities

Edition 11/1/2022 Ruralite C-6 Consumers Power (CPI)

Oregon is an amazing place to live.

 

We are blessed with beautiful natural surroundings like forests, lakes and mountains. On the flip side, it can be challenging to get access to the same services enjoyed by people living in more urban areas.

 

During the pandemic, few services became more important than a fast, reliable internet connection. In 2021, approximately 38 million people worked remotely. This is expected to be the norm for 15% of American workers. That’s roughly triple the pre-pandemic rate.

 

Historically in many parts of Oregon, only a few organizations have invested in building fiber-optic networks— the best infrastructure for providing telecommunications services. One of those is PEAK Internet. With offices in Corvallis and Lebanon, Oregon, it serves more than 20 communities across the state.

 

PEAK Internet is a local company that has been providing connectivity to homes, businesses, schools, libraries, universities, hospitals and veterans homes for decades.