Same mission as every Washington PUD. Harder ground than almost any.
It's fair to ask whether Okanogan is really like the other public utilities building broadband across the state. The honest answer is: in some ways yes, in some ways genuinely no — and that distinction matters, because our differences are exactly what should set the District's priorities. So let's lay it out plainly: where we're the same, where we're different, and what those differences actually argue for.
How we're the same — and how we're different.
We won't pretend Okanogan is a carbon copy of every PUD that's expanding fiber. It isn't. But look at what's shared and what's not, side by side, and the picture is clear.
Where we're the same
- Open-access wholesale. Like Pend Oreille, Kitsap, Mason 3, Grant, and Douglas, the District sells capacity to local private ISPs — it doesn't compete with them at retail.
- Public, non-profit, cost-based. An elected board; rates set to recover cost, not to turn a profit — the structure of a non-profit public utility. The standard WA-PUD structure.
- Built by public grant because private ISPs skipped us. Our network came from a 2010 federal grant — the same stimulus era that built Pend Oreille's.
- Facing the same market. Starlink, new competitors, rising demand for speed. Every PUD on this list is dealing with it.
- We run a wireless last mile. So do Pend Oreille and next-door Douglas — for the rural homes fiber won't reach.
Where we're different
- No dam, no cushion. Grant, Douglas, Mason, and Pend Oreille own hydropower dams that bankroll their fiber. Okanogan owns no generation — it buys its power (some from Douglas's dam). It can't cross-subsidize.
- The hardest ground in the state. The largest county in Washington, ~8 people per square mile, mountains and forest. Fiber-to-every-home is least economic here.
- The least able to absorb a price hike. The lowest incomes, oldest population, and highest rural share of nearly any WA county.
- Wireless is our rural network. Most peers are building fiber; for Okanogan's rural majority, the fixed-wireless last mile is the network.
- Our broadband already turns a profit. Several peers run theirs at a loss; Okanogan's telecom segment is audited-profitable.
Sources: peer dam ownership and financials from WA State Auditor audits and the PUDs' budgets; Okanogan demographics from the U.S. Census (see the ratepayer); Okanogan's audited telecom surplus on Follow the Money.
Our closest match faced the same situation — and kept its wireless.
Of every WA PUD, Pend Oreille is the truest peer: rural, mountainous, roughly as sparse (~9 people/sq mi), built on the same federal stimulus, same open-access model, and — like Okanogan — it runs both fiber and a fixed-wireless layer. Looking at the same competitive market and the same kind of rural customers, it kept its wireless in service, grew its broadband plant every year, and won a ~$12.4M grant to expand. The utility most like Okanogan chose to keep building.
(Honest caveat: Pend Oreille is ~1/3 Okanogan's population and its network is now mostly fiber — so it's a match on terrain, model, and origin, not on wireless scale. Source: POPUD 2024 audited annual report.)
Read honestly, every difference argues for the wireless — not against it.
Here's the move a careful board should make: take each way Okanogan is different, and ask what it implies for priorities. Done honestly, they all point the same direction.
Because we have no dam money to fall back on →
The affordable, self-funding layer is the one to protect first.
A utility without a hydro cushion can least afford to subsidize an expensive build — so it needs the option that's cheap and pays its own way most of all. That's the wireless: it reaches the rural majority and runs an audited surplus. Pausing the one self-supporting, rural-reaching asset is exactly backwards for the PUD with the least margin for error.
Because we have the hardest terrain in the state →
Wireless is the only last mile that reaches the rural majority in our lifetime.
Trenching fiber to every remote ranch across this county is a decades-and-fortunes project — which is why the District builds fiber only to the towns and funded pockets. For everyone else, a tower-based wireless layer is the irreplaceable connection, not the disposable one. The harder the ground, the more the wireless matters.
Because our ratepayers are the least able to absorb a price hike →
Keeping the cheap, local option is protecting the ratepayer.
In the county with the lowest incomes and oldest population, losing the affordable public option bites harder than it would anywhere richer or denser. For a household with ~$340 left at month's end, the local network is the difference between getting by and not. The poorer the customer, the higher the priority on the affordable layer.
Because our broadband actually makes money →
We don't even face the hard tradeoff our peers accept.
Kitsap and Jefferson keep broadband running at a loss because the mission justifies it. Okanogan's wireless turns a surplus — so keeping it costs nothing on net; it earns. There's no prudence case for pausing a profitable service that serves the people hardest to reach. The District's own stated reasons, answered →
Our differences set a clear priority. The pause ignores it.
Add it up. Okanogan is a normal Washington PUD in mission and model — so the playbook applies, and the utility most like it kept building. But where Okanogan differs — no dam money, the hardest terrain, the poorest ratepayers — every difference makes the rural wireless its single most essential broadband asset, not its most expendable one.
So the priorities almost write themselves: modernize the wireless — it's the affordable, self-funding, rural-reaching layer — build to proven demand the way Mason 3 does, and take the grants that are tilting toward wireless (Washington's largest-ever broadband award just went to a fixed-wireless provider). Fiber where it pays; wireless where it reaches. The District is doing the first and pausing the second — and for a county like this one, that has the priorities backwards.
On the funding tilt: when Washington's ~$1.02 billion BEAD program was finalized in 2026, its single largest award (~$332M) went to a fixed-wireless provider, and fixed wireless became the state's largest single technology by locations. (WA Commerce; Telecompetitor, 2026.)
Follow the argument
Follow the money
Why the wireless is affordable and self-funding — a profitable segment, under-reinvested.
See it →Meet the ratepayer
The lowest-income, oldest, most rural county — and why the cheap option matters most here.
See the portrait →Add your voice
Ask the elected Board to weigh these priorities in public.
Take action →