PUD Board meeting Monday, September 7, 2026 · 3:00 PM. Public comment is open — attend in person or join by Zoom →

Save Local BroadbandOkanogan County, WA
Okanogan County · A Public Issue  48.4°N · 119.5°W

Our rural wireless — the network keeping broadband affordable for most of the county — runs on aging hardware the District itself says can't keep up, and it voted to stop investing.

On May 4, 2026, the Okanogan PUD told local providers it would pause investment in the wireless network that serves thousands of rural homes, farms, and businesses. But that network runs on aging Cambium equipment the District's own engineers say is maxed out — and they had already scoped its replacement. The Board approved walking away from that investment on cursory information — when the District's own audited books and billing records make a strong case the other way. Stepping back may be easier for the District — but that's not the same as better for the county. A decision this consequential deserves a public, fully-informed review.

Public utility districts were created nearly a century ago to do what private companies wouldn't — stabilize essential service for rural people. This District has done exactly that with broadband for 25 years; what changed isn't the mission, only that the gear was left to fall behind — which makes the pause, not the upgrade, the real departure. Why this is bigger than a balance sheet →

And it was never about affording it: the telecom segment runs a surplus nearly every year and its net worth has more than doubled — the ~$1.2M upgrade is about a year and a half of that surplus. This was a choice, not a budget. Why the money was never the problem →

Add your voice → See the PUD's own numbers Read the letter

Field data — from the District's own audited books & billing records

≈ 1 ⁄ 3of PUD telecom revenue is wireless see the data
$808Kaudited telecom surplus, 2024 source
~92%collapse in wireless reinvestment since 2021 — the decline followed the forensics
~3 in 5county residents are rural — the majority wireless serves who
~$50Min federal broadband grants for the county — lost or moved to return, vs. a $1.2M upgrade the record
52%of the past year's wireless decline is one reseller — not the market the breakdown
7local providers resell PUD wireless 8 on the network
~15%of cancellations name Starlink, across the three providers who shared data — a minority the churn
~9×what fiber costs per home here vs. flat, denser counties (~$40K vs ~$4.3K) why not fiber?
~25%less than in 2009 — the PUD's proposed wholesale wireless rate, after inflation, for ~125× the speed the math
~77%of the county the wireless footprint reaches — the rural majority fiber won't the coverage
44%of county households can't afford the basics (below the ALICE line) — why the cheap option matters the ratepayer
The real value of the wireless network

Would the PUD tear up its Wildfire Mitigation Plan because last summer didn't burn?

Drain the $10 million Rate Stabilization Reserve it raised from $6 million in 2024 because it “isn't generating revenue”?

Quit the mutual-aid pact that sends crews across the state when a storm hits because in a good year it never needs them?

Obviously not. Hedging against the bad year is the whole job.

The rural wireless network is the same kind of hedge — except this one pays you to hold it.

A quiet fire season doesn't make the mitigation plan a waste — it's the reason it's there. The wireless network guards the same way: strip it away and a rural household doesn't get a cheaper bill, it gets one expensive option, priced by how few choices it has. And unlike the reserve or the mitigation plan, this hedge isn't even idle — it serves thousands of customers a day and brings in roughly a third of the District's telecom revenue while it stands guard.

$0.6–2.6M/yr
Price protection — what unchecked increases would cost the ~13,400 covered households
~$270K/yr
Its share of the audited surplus, every year — the premium on this hedge is negative
Why the towers protect your rates →

From the District's audited statements and its own workbooks — the full argument, with sources, is the Rate Stability page.

A history worth protecting

Twenty-five years in the making.

This network didn't appear on a spreadsheet. It was built — over two decades, with real risk — into something most rural counties can only envy: fast, local, competitive broadband that keeps the dollars and the accountability at home. Here's how it happened, and where it now stands.

An Okanogan PUD crew working on a wireless towerPublic infrastructure, built for this county — on ground that took decades to claim.
2000

A pioneering bet

Okanogan helps found NoaNet — one of about ten Washington utility districts building open-access fiber, precisely because private ISPs served the I-5 corridor and skipped the rural east.

2000
2002

Wireless reaches the valley

The District builds an 82-mile backbone from Pateros to the Canadian border and lights up fixed wireless for homes, farms, and businesses across the valley floor.

2002
2010

Federal partnership, local risk

A $5.5M grant and a $3.7M loan build ~170 wireless sites — debt the District took on and is steadily paying down. It's the network that still serves the county today.

2010
2010s–today

A rare rural market

Eight competing local providers, ~3,800 customers, cost-based prices, and a real person to call — more choice than most cities. The District's own words: “one of the leading rural broadband solutions in Washington.”

2010
2024

Investment goes quiet

The $1.2M platform upgrade is never put in any budget, and the Cambium hardware reaches end-of-life — left near 20 Mbps as the market moves on.

2024
May 2026

A crossroads

The Board pauses further wireless investment. After 25 years and real financial risk, the legacy is on the line.

2026

Today's commissioners weren't the ones who founded NoaNet in 2000 or built the network in 2010 — but they inherited the reward, and they decide whether the legacy continues. That's not a line on a spreadsheet. It's stewardship. See the full timeline →  ·  the history and the case →

Why the network is worth saving

No single network can carry a rural county. Three, together, can.

Fiber, local wireless, and Starlink each have one weakness that would strand a rural county on its own — and each one covers a gap the others can't. So the real question was never "which is best?" It's which layers you keep — because losing the wrong one makes the whole system more fragile and more expensive at the same time.

Every one of these networks has a fatal weakness. The county's resilience — and its affordable prices — live in the overlap.

Durable foundation

Fiber

The permanent spine — near-limitless speed, buried to last for decades.

StrongUnbeatable capacity and lifespan in towns, business corridors, and any pocket where density or grant money makes it pencil out.

The catchReaching one scattered rural home here runs about $40,000 — roughly 9× a flat, dense county. Universal fiber is a 20-year direction, not this decade's answer.

The paused layer

Local reach & accountability

Local wireless

The affordable layer the county actually owns — and the one being abandoned.

StrongReaches ~77% of the county fiber won't, resold by 7–8 local providers at cost, with a real person to call. It's the yardstick that keeps every provider's price honest.

The catchIts towers and radios are end-of-life and need the ~$1.2M upgrade the District paused. Starve it and it quietly fails — which is exactly what's happening now.

Independent reach

Starlink

The independent backup — reaches anywhere with a clear view of the sky.

StrongSurvives when local lines are cut and reaches the last, hardest homes. A genuinely good backup and emergency option.

The catchPriced and switched by one out-of-state company — already +44% on a rural bill with ~$1,000 surcharges — every dollar leaves the county, and you maintain the kit yourself for 15 years. Great as a backup; risky as the only option.

The real question was never which network is best. It's that a rural county needs all three — and only one of them answers to you.

Only the local wireless network is owned here, priced at cost, and accountable to a board you can vote out. Fiber won't reach the rural majority affordably for years, and Starlink is one distant company's to price and switch off. Let the wireless layer age out and those households aren't handed fiber — they're handed the satellite monopoly, with nothing left to hold its price in check. That's the layer the District paused, and that's what's actually on the table.

How the three layers protect the county → Why it keeps prices honest
Follow the money

Every dollar in. Every dollar out.

Who paid the District in 2025 — from its own billing reports, to the dollar — and where its own budget sent the money. Watch the rust band: rural wireless carried $1.14 million in. The budget sent $84,000 back.

Who paid — 2025, billed actuals Where it went — 2025 budgetCarrier fiber & transport → telecom revenue: $1,488,973 (billed, 2025)Rural wireless — the paused line → telecom revenue: $1,139,466 (billed, 2025)Local business & home fiber → telecom revenue: $473,028 (billed, 2025)Wholesale internet bandwidth → telecom revenue: $193,275 (billed, 2025)One-time builds & fees · $66,672 → telecom revenue: $66,672 (billed, 2025)telecom revenue → Wages & benefits: $1,186,139 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → All other operating: $828,562 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → Debt service — ARRA loan: $238,525 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → Fiber capital: $267,200 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → Core network & IT capital: $316,400 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → Wireless reinvestment · $83,750: $83,750 (2025 budget)telecom revenue → Budgeted surplus: $329,424 (2025 budget) Carrier fiber & transport $1,488,973 Rural wireless — the paused line $1,139,466 via the 7 local providers Local business & home fiber $473,028 Wholesale internet bandwidth $193,275 One-time builds & fees · $66,672 Wages & benefits $1,186,139 All other operating $828,562 Debt service — ARRA loan $238,525 Fiber capital $267,200 Core network & IT capital $316,400 Wireless reinvestment · $83,750 ← 7¢ per $1 it brought in Budgeted surplus $329,424 TELECOM REVENUE · ~$3.3M / YR

Of every $1 the wireless line brought in, its budget put back…

31¢
2021
28¢
2022
19¢
2023
16¢
2024
7¢
2025
2¢
2026

Every ribbon is the District's own number — billed actuals on the left, its own budget lines on the right. The fully annotated flow — every provider, every line item, every caveat — is on Follow the Money →

The heart of it

The District's own engineers already said it: this network is maxed out.

The District says it will "continue operating" the wireless system. But its own upgrade memo says the current access points are "no longer keeping up with demand" and the sites are "severely congested with no possibility for expansion." Aging gear from a vendor in distress doesn't get better by waiting.

The hardware is aging out

The network runs on Cambium PMP 450-series gear the District's own memo calls "no longer keeping up with demand." Support for the 450 line ends in 2027, and its maker — Cambium Networks — was delisted from Nasdaq in 2026 under a going-concern warning.

The replacement was already designed

The District's own engineers scoped a full Tarana 6 GHz replacement, and the District has stated it would cost about $1.2 million to complete — roughly one year of the wireless revenue it already earns.

The Board chose not to fund it

"No further investment" in a network you can't maintain isn't a steady state — it's a countdown to failure for ~2,700 households and the seven local providers who serve them.

Calling this "continuing to operate the existing system" is how a public asset fails. That's the decision that deserves a public, fully-informed review. See the evidence →

Who relies on the network

This is the network that serves most of the county — not a fringe.

About 3 in 5 county residents — roughly 27,000 people — live in the unincorporated rural areas this network covers, not in the towns.

~77%of the county's people live inside the wireless footprint
~32,000residents inside today's coverage
42,104county population, block by block
See it block by block — the full map

The towns aren't growing — Tonasket, Oroville, and Conconully have been flat or declining (state estimates, 2020–2024) while the county overall edged up. Fiber follows the towns; the rural majority rides wireless, because a fiber drop costs the customer about $1 a foot — often thousands of dollars — so only about 1 in 6 local connections are on fiber. Pausing wireless doesn't trim a backwater. It pushes the households with the least budget room toward the one bill they can least afford:

$660–$1,560/yr
Per displaced household — the satellite bill that replaces an affordable local plan
$3,000–$18,000+/yr
Per farm or small business — on satellite business plans, every dollar leaving the county
Map Income vs. investment Your address What serves you today The receipts 7 local providers · ~2,700 households
Why this one is different

Most decisions can be revisited. This one can't.

The pause is being treated as "wait and see" — step back now, step back in later if it's ever needed. But the District's ability to stabilize rural broadband isn't a switch it can flip back on. It's a 25-year stock: the network, the customers, a half-dozen small local providers, the trained crews, public trust, and the one-time federal money that built it all. Let it go and it doesn't come back on command — customers lock into a Starlink dish they've already paid for, the local ISPs (who own no towers of their own) lose customers and fold, and rebuilding would need another federal windfall like the $30M fiber grant the District just walked away from (rescinded unspent). Everything below is a reason this network is worth keeping. This is why you can't afford to find out what losing it costs.

It has already happened to a network built on the same model. Provo, Utah ran an open-access wholesale network on the same model as Okanogan's — Provo built on debt, Okanogan's is already paid down, but the open-access model is identical; once its local providers were left to collapse, the city sold the entire ~$39M network for $1 — and the local-provider ecosystem never came back. There's an economics term for why a "temporary" exit turns permanent (hysteresis) — but Okanogan has a closer cautionary tale than any textbook: itself, if it lets this go. Why the pause can't simply be undone →
The missing document

The District demanded a business case. Only one was ever filed.

This network isn’t a proposal — it’s a working public asset, twenty-five years built and paid for. For an asset you already own, continuing is the default; walking away is the decision that needs a case. We made the case for investing anyway. No one has made the other one.

Filed · the case for continuing
FOR-01

The market held under stress

Investment cut 92%, new-radio installs down 229/yr → 2 — and the local providers’ book moved just −5% in five and a half years. Customers stayed, on the District’s own billing. the record →

FOR-02

The trend is real — and it’s the gear

The steady bleed is attrition from a starved network: a 2010 federal build now 6–9 years past every published service life — the federal standard is 7, the District’s own analysis assumed 10 — selling no tier that meets even the FCC’s 2015 definition of broadband. One-time shocks landed on top. Real, explained — and 100% fixable. why the numbers dipped →

FOR-03

Starlink, already tested

Years head-to-head with every advantage on paper — speed, coverage, capital — and it shows up in roughly one exit in seven. That’s a competitor, not a sweep.

FOR-04

Investment is the variable

The only networks in this county that grew are the ones whose owners invested in them. Money in, growth; money out, a slow drift. The record answers the $1.2M question by itself. the head-to-head →

FOR-05

A generation of trust

Seven local providers, twenty-five years of kitchen-table installs, a neighbor who answers the phone — and residents on the record asking to sign up. in their own words →

Not filed · the case against

contents — none

opened may 2026 · still empty
OKANOGAN COUNTY PUD NO. 1 · CASE AGAINST INVESTING · NONE RECEIVED JULY 2026
Asserted instead — no filing behind them

“Starlink will take the market.”

evidence filed — none

“Private fiber makes public wireless obsolete.”

evidence filed — none

“The demand isn’t there.”

asserted without asking the 7 providers who hold the data

“The decline is the future.”

it tracks the age of the gear — the fix was scoped, budgeted, then shelved

Investing in an asset the county already owns isn’t the move that needs justifying. Walking away from it is — and that case has never been made.

Not all competition is the same

The "competition" the District points to isn't what it used to be.

Then

Locally owned

Support · jobs · dollars — circulating in the county

A provider run from Omak, answerable to its neighbors. The District competed — and grew.

owners shifted

Now

Investor owned

One rollup's portfolio: ISPs · fencing · pest control · patient monitoring

Absorbed into an out-of-area investment firm — and the rural fallback is a $350B satellite multinational.

Incentives matter.

A local owner answers to this community; an outside investor answers to returns. For a utility whose whole job is keeping rates fair, that shift is the point — and the District is stepping back right as it happens. See then vs. now →

The cost of waiting

“Wait and see” doesn’t preserve the option. It spends it.

The District says it will monitor subscriptions “for future consideration.” Our public model can price that: every year of waiting, the congested network sheds more customers into satellite hardware they’ve already paid for — and each one makes the same $1.2M upgrade pay back slower and less surely. The odds don’t wait for the Board to decide.

Odds the District earns its $1.2M back within the 15-year asset life — by how long the Board waits 50% — a coin flip 0 50 100% 88%84%80% 75%69%62% −4−4−5 −6−7 BUILD NOW+1 YR+2 YR +3 YR+4 YR+5 YR pays back ~9.0 yr9.49.8 10.410.911.4 yr

Our public Monte Carlo — 200,000 simulated futures per run, balanced assumptions, the delay slider swept 0→5 years (published as delay_sweep_output.json, regenerated with the model). The county-comes-out-ahead odds erode too: ~99% → 93%. Run it yourself — drag the slider →

Why the odds fall · 01

Customers lock in elsewhere. Every month on a congested network, more households buy a satellite dish — sunk hardware they won’t un-buy. The model assumes a conservative ~4%/yr; the District’s own staff deck says ~10 a week.

Why the odds fall · 02

The gear keeps aging. The current radios are already 6–9 years past their expected service life, with vendor support ending and spares drying up. Waiting doesn’t pause the hardware clock.

Why the odds fall · 03

Funded competitors build in the meantime. Federal BEAD money is landing in the county during exactly the years the Board proposes to spend “monitoring.”

The market can absorb a hard season. It can’t absorb an indefinite maybe. Every year of “monitoring” is a bet placed on never — at steadily worsening odds.

What the upgrade actually is

The replacement isn't maintenance. It reaches more homes.

The shelved upgrade is a generational jump — next-generation fixed wireless (the District chose Tarana) that sees around the trees and terrain the old line-of-sight radios couldn't. And this isn't a vendor promise: in the District's own field test from Jackass Butte, a sector engineered for a 90° view measured usable coverage closer to ~160° — nearly double the ground — with gigabit-class links reaching across the valley to Omak.

946Mbps · download

The District ran the speed test itself.

Its engineers put the next-generation gear on the Jackass Butte tower and measured real links across the valley to Omak — 243–946 Mbps — then the Board declined to fund the network it had just proven.

8 msping — vendor platform spec
~720Mbps median measured
20Mbps — today's gear tops out
~160°
usable coverage measured from a 90°-designed sector — the District's own test
946 Mbps
top download in the field tests (points ran 243–946 Mbps, median ~720) — vs today's 3–20 Mbps plans
+157
customer radios already funded in the $1.2M (1,035 vs 878) — growth capacity, pre-paid
250/50+
proposed plan, with room to 500+ — a real answer to satellite

It's growth the budget already paid for — and it strengthens every other argument here: more serviceable homes, a faster payback, a genuine answer to Starlink. See the technology and the field-test data →

The bigger picture

The PUD can stabilize prices here — even against Starlink.

This was never just a balance-sheet decision. A public utility carries responsibilities a spreadsheet can’t show — and on three of them, stepping back costs the county far more than the upgrade. These are the reasons PUDs exist at all.

1930 · Washington State
2×

the urban rate — what private power charged rural families. The countryside itself, it simply skipped.

The answer, then

Voters took the vote — and created Public Utility Districts to serve the places profit wouldn’t.

Exhibit A — rural electrification
2026 · Okanogan County
1

option left where the local network fades: a satellite priced and controlled from out of state — no local rate board, free to raise prices at will.

The answer, now

The PUD can’t set Starlink’s price — but a public at-cost option keeps the squeeze in check. Why its prices won’t fall on their own →

Exhibit B — rural broadband

Washington created Public Utility Districts in 1930 because rural service was priced from somewhere else. That is the situation this decision would recreate.

Three reasons a spreadsheet can’t show
Steward of the market01
at-cost
the only local check on pricing

The mirror above. A public option doesn’t set the satellite’s price — it makes raising it costly. Remove the option, and the squeeze has no counterweight.

The proof — Nebraska, 202602
+44%
one rural family’s Starlink bill jump — IPO week, June 2026

“Once they have rural customers… with no meaningful alternatives, they’re free to raise prices at will,” says the Republican former state senator whose bill it was.

Nebraska left all but $45M of $400M in federal broadband funds unspent — because “Starlink fixed it.” — Washington Post, June 2026

A 25-year ecosystem03
7
local providers ride this wireless line

More choice than most U.S. cities — and those businesses can’t reach the towers any other way. A local industry built over 25 years rides on this line.

The math, for the record

One-time cost: $1.2M. What it protects: $0.6–2.6M — every year.

Annual figure counts price protection only — before 911 resilience and seven local providers are worth a dollar. The math, with sources →

The real question isn’t whether the line clears a financial bar. It’s whether the PUD still sees itself as the steward of a market, the check on a distant monopoly, and a 25‑year public legacy — or as the operator of a line item it can switch off.

Who the customer is

The PUD doesn't sell to the public. It sells to local providers — and it skipped them.

The District runs a wholesale network — it doesn't sign up a single household. Its customers are the seven local retail providers that buy capacity and serve residents, and they are the ones who track demand, churn, and pricing customer by customer. Yet the May 4 letter — which concluded there isn't enough demand to justify investing — was addressed "To: Wireless Retail Services Providers": written to the District's own customers, announcing a market judgment it reached without consulting any of them.

The process gap — 01

It never asked the people who hold the data.

A wholesaler concluded its market had weakened — without asking the only people who hold the market data: its own customers. And those customers have been clear: the providers on this network have said they want the upgrade, because they see the demand for faster, reliable service in their own customer records. The District didn't weigh that demand and decide against it; it set the providers aside and relied instead on a comparison to Starlink's advertised prices.

The process gap — 02

Rising demand became a reason to retreat.

That is backwards for any utility. When the businesses that buy from you — and who know this market better than the District does — report that the demand is there, "wait and see whether it appears" is not prudence; it overlooks the customer. The letter itself concedes the point, noting that "customer demand for higher-speed wireless service has increased" — then treats that rising demand as a reason to step back rather than to invest.

The process gap — 03

The product was never megabits — it's a neighbor who answers.

There is a further distinction the analysis never addresses. For many of these providers, internet access isn't even the core business — what they sell is service, support, and a local relationship, often alongside phone or managed IT; the connection is the doorway, and the product is a local person who answers the phone. The District never engaged that reality. In effect it shadowboxed with the hypothetical customers of its customers — building a case about the residents it doesn't serve and holds no data on, while the providers who do serve them, who hold that data and want the upgrade, were never consulted.

The market for this network was never the general public — it was the local providers. And they were the very first people the District left out of the decision. See the process gap →

Does it pay for itself?

It's recoverable infrastructure — and affordable right now.

The worry at the center of the letter is that a cost-based utility can't be sure to recover an upgrade. Two things answer it. First, the District can plainly afford it: the ~$1.2M is about 1.5 years of the telecom segment's $808K annual surplus — funded from telecom, not borrowed, not taken from electric ratepayers. Second, it's per-customer infrastructure: the cost is mostly a ~$787 radio the District buys only for a customer it actually serves, on towers built to last. That's the kind of long-lived capital a utility recovers over an asset's service life — the way the 2010 wireless build did, and it's still earning ~$1.1 million a year sixteen years on. At the District's own audited cash margin and its proposed $40 rate, the upgrade recoups in a median ~9–10 years once the cash flows are discounted and stress-tested — within the gear's ~10–11-year life.

But recovering the District's cost is the smaller question. The bigger one — does the county come out ahead? — carries far stronger odds. We modeled three honest worldviews; in the central one the answer is ~99% — in plain English, almost however the next decade goes, Okanogan is better off with the network than without it. Even in a deliberately pessimistic world it's still ~82–97%. Because a public option forces the competition to compete instead of extracting monopoly rents, the savings land in households' pockets whether or not the District recoups a dime. See the three scenarios →

Share of the upgrade cost recovered, over time

Percent of the upgrade cost recovered over time, at the District's proposed $40 tier. Where a line crosses 100%, the upgrade has paid for itself; the dashed vertical is the equipment's ~10-year life.

These curves are undiscounted simple payback — the plainest reading of the cash flows; even the worst case — a below-audit 38% margin and a full NCI exit — recovers in ~7 years, so an NCI exit is built into the floor. The dashed lines show the upside the single-tier plan leaves on the table: more sign-ups at the same $40 price (the upgrade reaches more homes), tiered pricing, and — if it's popular — growth into the capacity the District already budgeted each cross sooner and recover more, the best case recovering nearly 3.5× the cost over the gear's life. Discounted and risk-modeled, the median payback is ~9–10 years, within the gear's ~10–11-year life. See how it's built →

See the full breakdown — the seven towers, the phased plan, the affordability math, and the technology bet

What that ~$1.2M actually buys — seven towers

From the District's own upgrade workbook (records request). Bubble size = customers served; green marks the three lowest-cost-per-customer sites.

Lowest $/customer — a natural phased start Remaining site Bubble = customers

A phased plan is right there in the data: the three cheapest-per-customer towers — Eder, Jackass Butte, Coleman — reach 543 of 878 customers (62%) for about $659,000. See every tower and the full table →

And the technology isn't the gamble — the state is betting on it. Under the federal government's now technology-neutral rules, Washington's approved BEAD plan put 47.5% of its funding into fixed wireless (all but even with fiber), and the state's single largest award — about $332M — went to a fixed-wireless provider. (Those awards are elsewhere in Washington, not Okanogan money — the point is the technology. WA Dept. of Commerce, 2026.)
~1.5 yrof segment surplus = the whole cost
Affordable now$1.2M against an $808K/yr telecom surplus and a segment whose audited net worth more than doubled to $10.5M — funded from telecom, not electric rates.
~$1,200all-in cost per upgraded customer
It scales with the baseMostly a per-customer radio — the District only buys one for a customer it serves (~$1,340 counting the full 1,035-radio budget). The cost tracks the customers, not a fixed gamble.
They stayon the network, not tied to one reseller
Robust to NCICustomers here are loyal to the local network, not to any one reseller. Even as NCI's RSP accounts fall, a modern network keeps those homes local — served by another local provider on the same public towers — instead of losing them to Starlink.

Recovery comes from customers staying on the network — and the upgrade is what keeps them. Letting the gear age does the opposite: it sends the revenue that would pay the upgrade back out the door to satellite. See the full cost analysis →

What actually drove the decline

Investment fell first — well before the satellite or the reseller.

The Board's premise is that satellite and competition pulled customers away. The District's own data shows what came first: put reinvestment and subscribers on one timeline and the order is unmistakable — the network's funding was cut while the customer base was at its peak, and the decline came more than a year later.

Left axis (rust): budgeted wireless reinvestment, by year. Right axis (navy, zero-based — no exaggeration): active subscribers, monthly. Reinvestment was cut 34% by 2023 — while the subscriber base was at its all-time peak. Customers didn't begin leaving until mid-2024, ~18 months later; and Starlink had been available since 2021, yet the base grew for three years after. So the District's own spending cut set the slide up first — Starlink's promo and NCI's RSP decline triggered the cliff that came later — and the deepest cut landed while the network was healthiest, so it was a choice, not a response to lost demand.

So the real question isn't whether the market doomed this network — it's why the District stopped investing in it. And that turns out to have nothing to do with money. The forensics, from the audited books →

The forensics — from the audited books

The money was never the problem. This was a choice.

We put the District's audited financial statements next to its budgets. The telecom segment isn't struggling — it ran an $808K surplus in 2024 (and a surplus every year but one), and by law (RCW 54.16.330) that telecom revenue is dedicated to telecom facilities — so funding a wireless upgrade from it is both lawful and routine, with no electric money involved. Yet the District never funded the $1.2M wireless upgrade — roughly 1.5 years of this segment's surplus — while its capital and attention went to a federally-funded fiber program. (Its audited net worth also more than doubled, to $10.5M — though that's equity and plant, not a pot of cash.) So this was never about affording it, or being unable to save for it.

$4.9M →​$10.5M
telecom net worth, 2019–2025 (audited) — more than doubled
$808K
telecom surplus in 2024 alone
$10M
rate reserve kept for the electric side — raised from $6M in 2024 — while the $1.2M wireless upgrade went unfunded
~1.5 yr
of surplus = the entire $1.2M upgrade

This is a stewardship question, not a money one: a healthy, growing public business that could fund this several times over chose not to maintain the network its rural majority depends on — and then said it couldn't afford to. See the full forensic breakdown →

The wider picture

Other WA PUDs keep investing in broadband. Okanogan paused the wireless its rural majority relies on.

The District will say it is investing — and it points to fiber. Fair. But its peers are expanding their networks while Okanogan freezes the wireless layer most of its county actually depends on — even as several put fresh public investment into the build.

Peer PUD — 01

Jefferson County PUD

Put about 40% of its 2026 capital budget — over $15 million — into broadband.

Peer PUD — 02

Kitsap County PUD

Building now on a $15 million federal award plus a state match — 21 new fiber nodes in 2026.

Peer PUD — 03 · the closest twin

Pend Oreille County PUD

A rural open-access PUD like Okanogan, built on a federal stimulus grant. It was just awarded ~$12.4 million in federal funds plus a $4.1 million state match to expand fiber — and still runs a wireless layer of its own. Rated 'A', stable by Fitch.

All open-access public utilities, like Okanogan — and all growing their networks. Okanogan is the one pausing its wireless layer. And the District's own fiber grant? $30M awarded in 2023, $0 spent two years later, and the District has now moved to rescind it (Res. 1863, June 2026 — pending) — so "we're still investing" doesn't answer for the ~2,700 customers on wireless now. See the comparison →

The path forward they never offered

The District demanded commitments — then offered no way to make one.

The GM said he'd reconsider only if customers "signed contracts" — yet the letter defined no commitment, set no threshold, and gave no one a way to sign anything. Meanwhile 100+ former customers told a local provider they'd return if it were modernized. And the risk needn't even fall on customers: it can sit with them, with the providers (who say they're willing to carry it), with the District, or be split — exactly as other Washington PUDs already do.

Mason PUD 3

Builds a "fiberhood" only when 75% of a neighborhood signs up — and those subscribers repay the build themselves (about $25/mo for 12 years), not the whole ratepayer base.

Kitsap PUD

Neighborhoods petition; once 51% of homes commit, the board builds. And sign-ups climb at least 20% more once construction starts — so today's count understates real demand.

Grays Harbor PUD

Projected a 40% take rate on its newest phase and got nearly double — demand routinely beats the pessimistic assumptions a pause is built on.

Okanogan could do the same — define the commitment, set the threshold, put the District on a build timeline, and build. Any of these works; the District simply never drew the path. See the four ways to share the risk and the per-household cost →

What's actually being decided

Easier for the District. That's not the same as better for the county.

Step back from "cost" and "speed" and look at the pattern. The District is pouring capital into fiber backbone; it already earns more from renting fiber and bandwidth to carriers (~$1.5M/yr — NoaNet, Zayo, CenturyLink, Charter) than from the rural wireless (~$1.1M) it just paused (the full revenue breakdown →); and that wireless line is the only one that requires supporting local competing providers. It reads less like a cost decision and more like a quiet shift — from an open-access utility, where local providers compete to serve residents, toward a backbone landlord that sells capacity to a few big operators and lets them run the retail show. That's genuinely easier for the District, and at least as profitable. The honest question is whether it's better for the county — and that's a question the public, not just staff, should get to answer.

Why it matters here

Open access is the difference between a neighbor and a landlord.

For a poor, rural county, open access isn't a technicality — it's the difference between a local provider who answers the phone and a distant company you can't fire. (Internet providers rank second-worst of 46 U.S. industries for customer satisfaction; what people hate is precisely the faceless, no-recourse big provider.) Local providers keep support, dollars, and jobs in the county — and the residents who rely on them have the least room in the budget for a price hike and the fewest alternatives if service goes bad.

Who steps in

The replacement isn't a company — it's a structure.

The operator positioned to take over isn't a better company — it's a different structure: an out-of-area investment firm, accountable to its investors rather than to this county. The record of outside-investor-owned rural broadband elsewhere is sobering — private-equity-built Trueline collapsed five months after it was assembled (~300 laid off overnight, builds abandoned); private-equity-owned Brightspeed drew waves of service complaints. That's no prediction about any local company — it's the structural risk: when an essential service answers to distant investors, the county holds no lever when the structure's incentives turn. The only lever a county can own is the one this decision is about.

A backbone-only utility is a legitimate model, and it is less work for the District. But "easier and just as profitable for the utility" is not the same as "better for the ratepayers it exists to serve." If the District means to step back and hand the county's retail broadband to a large private operator, it should say so and let the public decide — not let it happen by attrition. Who actually owns the "competition"? →

The core of it

Starlink threw its best punch. The RSP program held — except NCI.

Here's the test the District ignored — and the timeline is the part it skips. The base held for years, straight through the early Starlink era. It only began sliding in 2024 — the year the District let capital investment go flat and the Cambium gear started aging out.

Late 2025

Then two things landed together.

In late 2025, two things landed together: Starlink's cheapest-ever pricing and a sharp drop in NCI's RSP subscribers — the customers NCI serves over the District's open-access network — amid its restructuring under the out-of-area-owned Core Fiber rollup.

The network weathered Starlink — every other reseller's subscriber count moved under 9% (Will Connect held flat; BHPcom grew) — while NCI's RSP book made up 52% of the past year's drop. (We can't tell from the District's data how much of NCI's drop is customers it moved onto its own towers versus customers it lost — NCI runs its own network and its leadership cites the former. Either way, it's one reseller pulling back from the RSP program, not the platform failing.)

The quiet factor

And some customers didn't leave at all.

Okanogan's rural service area is among the oldest in the state — county deaths have run about 20% above the pre-COVID baseline every year since 2021, and the county now loses more people than are born here, for the first time on record. A real share of every provider's "lost customers" are people who passed away — and a customer who dies is not lost demand, and says nothing about the network. The demographics →

The read

A real trend with a named cause — disinvestment — and shocks on top. Not a market turning away.

So the read is simple: disinvestment started the slide; one reseller's restructuring, Starlink's promo, and record mortality in an aging service area landed on top — several distinct forces in one short window, none of them a verdict on the platform. The network held through all of it everywhere except that one reseller's book — and the fixable parts all point to the same fix. (It was never mainly about speed: most rural homes need ~10 Mbps; what holds them is a connection that works, from someone local.)

Active wireless subscribers, Oct 2023 → May 2026. The base held flat for years — through the whole early Starlink era — and only began sliding after capital investment went flat in 2024 (first marker). The recent cliff has two causes that landed together (the middle markers): Starlink's cheapest-ever WA pricing (Nov 2025) and a sharp drop in NCI's RSP subscribers (Dec 2025) amid its Core Fiber restructuring. Even so, the network weathered Starlink — every other reseller barely moved, and Will Connect ended flat. Disinvestment started the slide; NCI's RSP decline and the promo accelerated it — investment fixes both. Axis fitted to the range shown.

And here's what that headline number hides — which reseller the decline sits in. Each bar shows the fall in that reseller's RSP subscribers on the network and, in parentheses, that fall as a share of its own base — accounts that left the RSP program, not necessarily customers the county lost:

Change in wireless subscribers by reseller, past 12 months, from the District's own per-reseller reports. NCI Datacom alone is 52% of the entire decline — after its tie-up with Core Fiber, an out-of-area investor-owned consolidator — while every other reseller declined far more gently — Will Connect ended the year flat. This isn't broad demand erosion; it's concentrated in one reseller's RSP book after its Core Fiber restructuring. (The District's data shows the RSP accounts fell — not why, or where those customers went.) Read it the second way — as a share of each provider's own base — and NCI stands out even more: its RSP accounts fell roughly a quarter (−25%) while every other reseller held to single digits, and BHPcom even grew. See the full breakdown →

The District's logic

Subscribers are falling, so it will hold investment until enrollment rises on its own. But the network is losing customers because it's slow and obsolete — so "wait for them to come back" to an un-upgraded, end-of-life system all but guarantees they won't. It treats the decline as a reason to stop, when it's a reason to act.

Why that hands Starlink the win

What holds a rural customer isn't peak speed — most need only ~10 Mbps. It's a connection that simply works. Aging, end-of-life gear the District can't get parts for only grows less reliable, and every outage makes Starlink look better. A funded Tarana upgrade is about reliability, not gigabit — and reliability is what keeps customers.

This is a fight the District can win — but only by competing, not surrendering. Abandoning the wireless platform cedes rural Okanogan to an out-of-state satellite that costs more and keeps no dollars local, and pushes the county's lowest-income households toward a bill they can least afford. Investment is the defense. See the full breakdown →

On price

The District decided its providers can't match Starlink's price. They can.

The District's letter states it "does not compete on price," and treats that as settled — in effect deciding, on the providers' behalf, that local service can't match Starlink. That's wrong, and it misreads how the network works: the District doesn't set retail prices — its providers do, and they have said plainly that they can match Starlink.

Starlink residential
$55–$130/mo

100 Mbps on the $55 tier (speeds not guaranteed — no SLA). $349 hardware (or ~$10/mo rental). Money leaves the county. (rates as of June 2026)

Local, modernized
≈ $50/mo

At or below Starlink's cheapest price — for 250 Mbps, more than double the speed, and no priority tiers. Cost-based — the structure of a non-profit public utility. Local installer and support. Stays in the county. (estimate)

Starlink business
$250–$1,500/mo

$1,999–$2,500 hardware. No on-site service, no local accountability.

The local demand is already there. Even as the wireless base shrank this past year, the District's average revenue per wireless subscriber rose about 8% — $28.90 → $31.30 a month, in its own billing records. The customers who stayed are paying more: exactly the willingness-to-pay a tiered, premium plan would capture. (Wholesale ARPU; reflects who stayed, not a uniform increase.)
Whose call is it?

The District decided a question it doesn't control.

It sells wholesale at a fixed, cost-based rate; the retail price a customer actually pays is set by the local providers, who compete on it — and because the wholesale rate doesn't change, the District earns the same whether retail prices are high or low. Whether the local side "competes on price" was never the District's call to make. It's the providers' — and here is what they say:

What the providers say — 01

Some match Starlink head-on.

They will price at Starlink's level outright — about $50 — and give more for it: higher speed, no priority tiers, a local person who answers the phone. They can hold that price on a thin internet margin because, for many providers, the internet isn't the profit center — the margin comes from phone, managed IT, security, and business services, with the connection as the anchor. Some could sell the internet at cost and still come out ahead. This is the business model the District's case never accounts for.

What the providers say — 02

Others match on value.

They price a step above Starlink's floor but deliver far more — more speed, real reliability, local support, and dollars that stay in the county.

What the providers say — 03

Every provider could compete at every level — with tiers above the base.

The proposed $40 base plan is fair — about 25% cheaper in real terms than the 2009 rate. The gap is that it's the only plan: a standard / premium / business ladder built on top of it would let each provider meet Starlink head-to-head, and give the third of customers who buy the fastest tier something to buy. (See the pricing analysis.)

The bottom line

Not a finding — an assumption.

So "the local side can't compete on price" is not a finding — it's an assumption the District made for businesses it never asked, about a price it doesn't set. The providers can match Starlink's cheapest plan and beat its premium ones; a single-product, out-of-state satellite company can do neither.

Same price as Starlink's cheapest — with more speed, a local technician, and dollars that stay in the county. The only thing standing between residents and that deal is a wholesale network the District chooses to keep running. Check the price and speed at your address →

Follow the ownership

Without the PUD, your "competition" is one out-of-area, investor-owned operator — accountable to investors, not you.

The District leans on a "competitive marketplace" — the idea that private providers will handle wireless, so it doesn't have to. So let's pull back the curtain on who that "market" actually is. The familiar local name — NCI Datacom of Omak — is being retired: in 2023 it joined Core Fiber Partners, the ISP platform of Heritage Holding — an out-of-area investment firm that buys up and consolidates regional companies across more than a dozen industries (ISPs, fencing, pest control, patient monitoring), with co-investor Plexus Capital — headquartered outside the county and accountable to investors, not ratepayers. And it's the very operator whose RSP book just dropped sharply, accounting for more than half the county's entire RSP-subscriber decline in a matter of months. One out-of-area, investor-owned provider isn't a competitive market. It's a monopoly-in-waiting.

Competition is the public asset

The PUD's open-access network lets seven local providers compete for you — on service, price, and a real person in this county to call, all under a publicly elected board. That competition is the thing worth protecting. Walk away and you don't get a free market; you get whoever's left, on their terms.

Open access lets customers vote with their feet

On the District's network, a customer who's unhappy can switch to a well-run local provider without losing service — or fall back to satellite if there's no other option. That ability to walk is what keeps every provider honest on price and service. That leverage only exists when there's competition to switch to — exactly what the pause puts at risk.

They'll flock to the good RSPs — if those RSPs can match the speed

The one thing the good local providers need to win is a network fast enough to compete — the exact modernization the District just declined. Fund it, and customers move to the providers who answer the phone. Freeze it, and they're stranded with an out-of-area, investor-owned monopoly or an out-of-state dish.

And don't buy the "it's not worth it" excuse: an out-of-area investment firm is putting real money into this exact market and building a modern wireless network right here — and nobody, public or private, sinks capital into a dying asset. If the numbers pencil out for a profit-driven, out-of-area operator, the District's "subscribers are declining, so we won't invest" line collapses outright. (Whether that's private money, a public grant, or both, the point is the same.) The only real question is whether Okanogan County gets that network through accountable local competition — or an out-of-area, investor-owned monopoly whose local arm just failed its customers on service. See the funding records →

What the PUD's own books show

This isn't a rounding error. It's a third of the business.

The audited financial statements report the telecom revenue total but don't split wireless from fiber. So we did — from the District's own monthly billing records, obtained by public-records request. Every figure below traces back to those records or the State Auditor's report.

~33%of telecom operating revenue
Wireless shareSteady at 30–34% every year, 2021–2025.
$1.14Mbilled in 2025
Wireless revenueFlat-to-rising for five years — not collapsing.
$808Kaudited, 2024
Telecom surplusUp from $696K in 2023. The segment is profitable.
~$1.2Mthe District's stated figure
Cost to completeThe District's own stated figure — a one-time outlay, about one year of the revenue the wireless line earns. We take it at face value.

And here's what the District has backwards: a one-time outlay — on the order of a year of the line's revenue — defends a recurring ~$1.1M-a-year revenue stream. The real risk isn't the one-time upgrade; it's letting a recurring revenue line erode on "wait and see." Why inaction is the expensive option → — and the cost is recoverable, and affordable now.

Explore every chart →

The false equivalency

Starlink is a backstop — not a replacement for the network we own.

Satellite is the right answer for a cabin at the end of a dirt road, and a fine backup anywhere. But trading a network the public owns and controls for one run from out of state isn't an upgrade — it hands the county's connectivity to a single distant company.

Let's be upfront about what this is not about. You'll hear that Starlink's "cells" get congested and slow down. Out here, honestly, they won't — Okanogan is too sparse to fill a cell, and SpaceX keeps adding capacity — a premium "gigabit" tier is even appearing, though as a business-first product, not the plan a rural family buys. Bandwidth was never the real problem. The problem is dependence and control — and those don't improve when the satellites get faster.

It all hinges on one company — and one rocket

Starlink isn't infrastructure the county owns; it's a subscription to a fleet that must be relaunched forever. The satellites drop out of orbit in about five years, so the service exists only as long as one company keeps launching — on its schedule, its priorities, its finances. Even the promised "gigabit" rides on a next-generation satellite that flies only on Starship, still in testing. Your county's connectivity would depend on one company keeping up, indefinitely.

One company holds the price, the rules, and the off-switch

With a local network you elect the board, read the records, and call a neighbor when it breaks. With Starlink the price, the terms, and the kill-switch all live at one headquarters: the price is set with no local rate board; the contract calls the service "as is" and "not a mission-critical or safety-of-life service," with no guaranteed uptime; and on July 24, 2025 a single software bug took ~6 million users across 140 countries offline at once. A distributed local network can't fail all at once like that.

Every dollar leaves the county

Starlink's monthly fee plus $349 of hardware goes to an out-of-state company — and the fast Starlink (gigabit, an SLA, priority) is the business tier at $250+/mo; what a rural family can afford is the basic residential plan. The local providers keep the dollars, jobs, and accountability here, at cost-based prices the lowest-income households can actually reach.

A backstop, not a foundation

Satellite is genuinely the best answer for the truly remote, and a smart backup for everyone. But a resilient county is local-first, with satellite as the backup — not dependent on orbit. Trading a public network you already built and paid down for reliance on one distant company doesn't add resilience; it removes the choice, the local control, and the price-check the PUD exists to provide.

"But won't it just get better?" Yes — V3 raises capacity and a gigabit tier is coming. But more capable doesn't make it local, at-cost, or yours. It's a finite resource an investor-run company rations — paid to sell more connections (now to every phone on Earth), not to cut your price — and the fast tiers are the premium business product. A faster rental is still a rental. The full answer, and what V3 changes →

None of this means Starlink is bad — it's a marvel, and for the truly unreachable it's the best there is. It means satellite and a network you own are different things. The resilient answer was never local or satellite — it's local with satellite as the backup. Pausing investment doesn't add the backup; it removes the primary the backup is meant to support.

Our ask

What we're asking the elected PUD Board to do.

It comes down to one question the public deserves to weigh in on: the easy path for the District isn't the same as the right one for the county. We're asking the elected Board to make this choice in the open, with the full facts — not by attrition.

  1. Revisit the decision with the complete financial facts.

    The vote was taken without the wireless revenue and upgrade-cost analysis now on the table.

  2. Release the analysis the Board relied on.

    Show the public what information this decision was actually based on.

  3. Reconsider it in a public meeting.

    On the agenda, with the full facts and a chance for public comment.

  4. Build to demand — the way other WA PUDs do.

    Phase the upgrade with neighborhood pledges and beneficiary-pays financing (as Mason and Kitsap PUDs do), starting with the lowest-cost towers — so investment follows proven demand instead of waiting on a frozen network. See the model →

  5. Engage the providers who were never asked.

    The local retail providers weren't consulted before this decision. Bring them — and residents — into the plan before any final direction is set.

  6. Put a date and a dollar figure on the "pause."

    If this is deferral and not cancellation, attach a specific review date and a funded trigger — starting with the lowest-cost, fastest-payback towers — so a pause can't become a permanent retreat by default.

What you can do

Thirty seconds today.

Add your name so the Board can see how many residents want a public review. 115 have added their voice so far. Then, if you have fifteen minutes, send the letter and find the next meeting →