FILE: A truck loaded with hay bales leaves rural Harney County, Ore., on Dec. 13, 2019.
Emily Cureton / OPB
Cellphone service is spotty enough in Harney County that it came to the attention of the local emergency management department.
Emergency Manager Melinda Todd reported to Harney County commissioners this week that she had received reports from residents who weren’t getting cellphone reception.
“If you only have a cellphone, there’s no way to call Verizon and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got an outage,’ she said. “They also can’t (call) 911.″
Todd said the county got in touch with Verizon, which requested customers provide them with more specific geographic data when experiencing service interruptions and cautioned that older cellphones may not work on its network.
State Rep. Mark Owens said even newer phones experience patchy service throughout Harney County.
Owens represents the sprawling 60th House District from his home near Crane, an unincorporated community about 30 miles southeast of Burns, the Harney County seat.
“It’s troublesome because, honestly, it’s a public safety issue,” he said. “If you’re driving down one of the roads or even the state highways, if something happens to you, the use of a cellphone is crucial to bringing emergency services.”
FILE: Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, pictured in Harney County on August 27, 2021.
Emily Cureton Cook / OPB
Owens said it’s one of the top challenges for “frontier” communities, the 10 Oregon counties where small populations and spacious geographies mean there are six or fewer people per square mile. In Harney County, that number is less than one.
Frontier counties typically needed two services to grow, Owens said: good schools and quality hospitals.
“In the world that we live in today, you have to have communication, communication that extends past a hardwire phone — those are going out. You have to have broadband and you have to have cell service,” he added. “Communication is the third leg of the stool that you need in order to maintain some sort of growth in rural communities.”
Private telecommunications companies have typically invested less in infrastructure for rural areas because of the small customer base. But as a legislator, Owens said, he’s willing to look into possible solutions in Salem to help bridge the gap.
Owens said he’d need to have more discussions on the issue but could see the state or federal government building cellular tower bases in frontier counties for private companies to rent.
Although the lack of cellphone service is becoming a topic of discussion at the county level, it’s not a top concern for Matt Hawley.
The superintendent of Crane Schools said his schools only lack service when the towers go down completely, which happens infrequently. In case of emergency, Hawley said, the school has plenty of landlines to use.
Hawley believes locals know which cellular providers just don’t work in Harney County and choose their plans accordingly.
Otherwise, Hawley said, the biggest recent development in telecommunications at his schools was a ban on student cellphones, which he said has led to a lot fewer disciplinary incidents this year.