Tillamook County is a hidden gem, a rural county lodged between the coast and the city, defined by its rocky coastline, charming coastal towns, and picturesque mountain forests. There’s a reason those who visit want to stay. The quality of life here is hard to beat.
While the rustic nature of this corner of Oregon paradise is a key to its charm, in some ways we have failed to keep up to modern standards. One case in point is Highway 6, a stunningly beautiful two-lane road joining Banks in Washington County to Tillamook and the coast beyond. Known as the Trees to Sea Scenic Byway, Highway 6 winds through sharp and sometimes blind turns, along steep forest slopes, usually with limited shoulders. As beautiful as it is, it can also be dangerous, especially at night and in bad weather. In a single treacherous week in August 2021, three accidents left four people dead.
As challenging as Highway 6 is for drivers, it poses even greater difficulties for our first responders, as cellular service is almost non-existent along these 37 miles of wooded highway. Without cell service, emergency response is severely compromised. In the wake of traumatic injury, where minutes can spell the difference between life and death, that lack of cellular service is no small matter. Neither are the road closures that can take hours to clear up in the wake of major crashes.
Now we may be close to a solution. As part of a plan to land a new, 9,400-mile fiber-optic cable at the Winema Christian Camp in Cloverdale, Ore., Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping to fund a new fiber-optic line along Highway 6 to Hillsboro. This project will enable wired internet service along a 39-mile stretch of Highway 6 that has no cellular service at all. While this project does not specifically include installation of cellular towers along the route, the availability of high-speed, high-capacity wired service means installing cellular antennas will be relatively simple and affordable compared to what would have been necessary before.
Adding cellular service will benefit everyone who traverses this beautiful part of the county, from drivers bound for the coast to hikers seeking solitude on mountain trails. For police, firefighters, and other emergency workers, though, the promise of reliable cell service will mark a major improvement in their ability to respond to emergencies.
The new Highway 6 fiber optic link funded by AWS will also benefit those who live in this more remote part of the county where internet service is often unavailable. As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, when working people and students were asked to stay home and do their work remotely, young students in rural homes were disproportionately disadvantaged.
An independent study conducted for the public-private Tillamook Lightwave consortium found that about one in every 27 people in our county—some 1,000 people in all—lack access to wired internet service. Tillamook Lightwave’s recent broadband study found that three-quarters of survey respondents said their internet service did not meet student needs or did so in only a limited way during the pandemic; only one quarter of respondents who worked from home said their internet service was adequate.
Improving connectivity across regions and demographics is a national problem. But here in Tillamook, we are well on the way to solving a major portion of our challenge. The proposed Highway 6 fiber-optic cable project will provide “last mile” connectivity that will bring the kind of high-speed internet service businesses and homeowners rely on throughout the Portland metro area directly to the property lines of 273 home owners who currently have no such service here in Tillamook County. Of course, not all those homeowners will want that connectivity; but at least now every one of them will have the option—now or later—to connect.
Critically, this cable will also enable cellular services to be deployed along the highway corridor. My 2022 priority bill, OR House Bill 4053, required the Oregon Department of Transportation to study Highway 6 and provide recommendations to the Oregon Legislature on improvements and efficiencies. That study is currently underway. The addition of this cable landing will enhance public safety by eliminating an unsafe and dangerous dead zone on Highway 6. With cellular phone and data services, motorists will be able to report disabled vehicles; police and firefighters will be able to access their networks from the road, meaning they can more rapidly respond to dangerous road conditions, such as downed trees, or to forest fires, missing person emergencies, and other matters where timeliness can spell the difference between life or death.
These benefits will accrue to the county as a result of the Bifrost data cable, one of the longest and fastest data links across the Pacific. The Bifrost Trans-Pacific cable will connect Singapore to Grover Beach, California, but also include branch lines diverting to Indonesia, the Philippines and Oregon. Cable landings are nothing new. As of 2019, there were 75 submarine cables connecting the West Coast of the United States to other parts of the world and nine others under construction. Tillamook County already hosts the largest hub of transcontinental undersea fiber cables on the west coast. Yet community members and fishermen won’t even notice the new branch landing in Cloverdale, as it will be located far below the surface, traversing under the seafloor to a terminus adjacent to a parking lot.
In a modern economy, broadband access is as necessary as electricity. With projects like this one, Tillamook moves significantly forward in ensuring broadband access for all.
