In a Changing Broadband Landscape, Even the Haves Have Not
September 19, 2025Camp Sherman, Oregon: A Community in Need of Broadband
Photo: Camp Sherman Bridge across the Metolius River by DBerry
While it may not face the same economic barriers as many other rural areas underserved with broadband – with household incomes approximately 20% higher than the Oregon average – Camp Sherman, Oregon, has broadband gaps and is now stuck in broadband limbo.
Camp Sherman is a small, unincorporated community nestled in the Deschutes National Forest of Central Oregon. The community has clear goals to improve connectivity. Local leaders and residents formed a broadband task force, engaged stakeholders, and launched CampShermanFiber.com to share updates and rally community interest. While these important steps have shown the community has demand and a pressing need for broadband, there has been difficulty in achieving results.
Even though the area was selected as a Federal broadband RDOF grant award recipient in 2020, the project never came to fruition. Like many other communities facing similar hurdles, the program that provided a brief period of hope for residents to get broadband service, ended up as a default on commitments, leaving the goal of achieving high-speed internet back to square one.
Today, Camp Sherman remains unserved by fiber. Residents rely on satellite or fixed wireless connections which have proven inadequate for work-from-home professionals, students, and local small businesses. Additionally, Camp Sherman is under the canopy of conifers, obscuring the sky view of satellites and many residences and businesses simply cannot connect to satellite providers, leaving them with no option at all to connect to the internet.
Camp Sherman also highlights the unique challenges of rural broadband planning:
- Seasonal residency patterns can complicate demand forecasting and network return on investment.
- Low housing density and forested terrain make construction costly.
- Despite higher incomes, the community lacks the scale to attract traditional private investment on its own.
Camp Sherman shows that even relatively affluent communities, the so-called “haves”, can still lack broadband access and thus ‘have-not’.
When it comes to building digital infrastructure, there is no substitute for working closely with a community to address its specific needs. There is no a one-size-fits-all solution to providing internet service in places that struggle to attract traditional market driven investment.
An individualized case must be developed to show that utilization of broadband from a community’s residents and businesses can support an investment in digital infrastructure. Building an economic case for investing in broadband needs to breakdown traditional silos and bring together many factors including the need to support online services such as telehealth, online education, and public safety communications. In addition, the support of community leaders is paramount to supporting the long-term vision and the benefits that internet connectivity can enable for a community. There are also other considerations such as, an area’s relative vicinity to other regional municipalities, which can increase the scale of broadband planning and develop the market viability to support digital infrastructure investment.
“Black Butte School District has been leading the charge in Camp Sherman towards fiber, for over 10 years. We have experienced one devastating set back after another, leaving us now in a state of limbo. We are wondering if anyone will believe us when we say that satellite and fixed wireless internet do not work under the canopy of pines. Fiber is our only option for our community to enter into the 21st Century. Without it we will simply be limping along patching together solutions that do not actually fix the problem. We live at least an hour away from most doctors, and would love to choose to video conference with them, but with satellite providers, these calls drop, skip, or become garbled. Many people choose not to invest in our community because of our lack of internet, so the long-term sustainability of our community is in the balance.” Jennie Sharp, Special Projects Manager, Black Butte School District
What Can Communities Do Now?
With delays and uncertainty in government broadband funding (e.g. BEAD and RDOF) , communities need a new strategy—one that’s locally driven, financially sustainable, and less dependent on government subsidies.
Plan for Action, Not Just on Paper
Communities need to go beyond high-level strategies and feasibility studies that are not actionable. They need to produce investment-ready, technically and financially viable broadband plans that align with market opportunities. Broadband planning and technical feasibility assessments need to aggregate demand and build a sustainable business case that will attract internet service providers (ISPs) and infrastructure investors.
Bring Funding Options to the Table
Consider options such as revenue bond financing and public–private joint ventures, which are powerful tools that exist for communities to leverage municipal and stable market conditions in order to help clients structure broadband projects that do not rely solely on slow-moving federal programs. Communities that are ready to take steps to address broadband should determine the best approach that suits their current status and aims (see Options to Bridge Broadband Gaps).
Engage Local Partners who are Stakeholders
Some of the most valuable partners in the broadband space, are local organizations that are already or could/should be using the internet as a part of their everyday operations. These can include local education and health institutions, as well as non-profit and government organizations that are directly engaged with the local community. Understanding the needs of these organizations can help shape the best approach to solving broadband challenges and improving utilization.
Use Data to Build Support and Reduce Risk
By conducting granular market assessments and financial modeling tools help communities delineate and define underserved areas, quantify demand, and evaluate the economic impacts of broadband investments, communities can provide validation for return on investment that is critical for securing stakeholder buy-in and minimizing risk for investors.
The Bottom Line
We’re in a moment where the broadband future feels uncertain. But that does not mean communities should wait. It means they should act.
Taking action on your broadband future includes:
- Developing an economic case for broadband by showing how high-speed internet access drives jobs, education, healthcare, and community growth to help secure funding and investment
- Building consensus to help elected officials and key stakeholders make informed decisions on why broadband is critical
- Identifying opportunities for budgets to use existing allocations to self-finance digital infrastructure
- Conducting broadband market demand analysis and financial modeling for funding and private investment (including bond and grant opportunities)
- Hiring an owner’s representative so networks are designed, built, and operated to address community needs – and drive network uptake and utilization of online practices for network sustainability, local economic impacts, and community benefits
Contact SNG for more information about how we help communities overcome these challenges, avoid common pitfalls, and deliver results in broadband planning and deployment. Let’s build broadband infrastructure that gets funded, built, and drives community benefits by starting with two questions:
- Are your community leaders ready to move forward on a broadband initiative? Use the Digital Needs and Readiness Assessment to find out
- To what extent could existing telecommunications budgets finance your digital infrastructure? Take the Broadband Economic Feasibility Assessment
