Should city of Bend become an Internet provider?

Is the city of Bend considering becoming an Internet provider? You might get that impression from the label for a Bend Chamber “What’s Brewing” event tonight, but the city has its own answer.

“Should the city of Bend be your Internet provider?”was the topic of the gathering at the Deschutes Brewery Tap Room.

The invitation noted that “bandwidth usage in Bend has doubled in the last year alone.”

“How much bandwidth is enough?” the chamber asks. “Who is impacted by not having the Internet work the way they need?”

The chamber goes on to note that it’s an issue not just affecting the tech industry but other users large and small, from home businesses to the health care industry.

Also lending some weight to the notion is that the city’s new business advocate, Ben Hemson, was co-moderating the event.

Panelists included Ruffwear founder Patrick Kruse and Matt Abrams of Seven Peaks Ventures. Three local providers are “response panelists” — Stephanie Senner orf BendBroadband, BendTel CEO Tom Barrett and Brian Gray, CenturyLink’s manager of construction and engineering.

Some area tech companies say the Internet is slow and expensive. As Bend is trying to attract more business and talent to the High Desert. One software developer, Five Talent, has developed a workaround to deal with the sluggish Internet.

They say the area’s Internet doesn’t keep up with their demands.

“We all notice the lag, and we all notice that we’re hitting bandwidth capacity pretty regularly,” said Lorenzo Aiello, an IT engineer with Five Talent.

“We had to find a workaround because we can’t — we struggle with the local speed,” Aiello said, adding that the company is paying twice as much for its needed broadband as it would in Portland.

Hemson said, “It’s important to know that the city is not, either at the staff or at the council level, discussing municipal broadband.”

It’s also the topic of our new KTVZ.COM Poll: Should the city of Bend become an Internet provider? You can find it halfway down the right side of our home page.