Legislative Advocacy

When it comes to broadband, we believe citizens are best served by a consistent approach to technologies and business models statewide.

That’s why we advocate for a proven model developed by ports to create publicly owned, open-access dark fiber infrastructure. By leasing the dark fiber plant to retail service providers at a price point that allows competitive pricing to consumers, public entities facilitate economic development. The private sector competes to sell services, while investing in employees and equipment to grow their business in unserved communities.

This proven approach, combining public fiber with private sector service delivery, is addressing the inadequacies of past policies and investments. We urge legislators at all levels of government to promote and invest in this public-private approach.

Learn about some of these success stories below.

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Garfield County, WASHINGTON
Nearly 700 homes and businesses now have access to high-speed broadband, thanks to the Port of Garfield’s fiber-to-the-home project. Before now, most of Garfield County was limited to aging copper systems that exceeded the distance limitations for all except the slowest DSL services.
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Whitman County, WASHINGTON
The Port of Whitman County’s fiber-to-the-home project will soon provide high-speed broadband to five rural towns in Whitman County: Rosalia, Tekoa, Oakesdale, Lamont and Palouse. In addition, a public-private partnership allowed the Port to save about $1.5 million toward the fiber network, which will be redirected to fiber extensions in the rural areas around Tekoa, Lamont, Oakesdale, Garfield, Farmington and Plaza in 2021.
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CLARK COUNTY, WASHINGTON
The Port of Ridgefield’s fiber optic project will modernize the broadband infrastructure in Southwest Washington’s Discovery Corridor and provide connection to the Washington State University Vancouver campus. By lowering the up-front capital costs of private internet service providers, this project will ensure better service for Clark County businesses, institutions and citizens.
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Principles for Broadband Legislation

  1. The demand for bandwidth is continually growing, particularly as people connect from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington State Senate Bill 5511 requires 1 gig backhaul to every community and anchor institution by 2026, and 150/150 mbps symmetrical service to all citizens in 2028. These goals will not be met by focusing on trying to stretch the use of existing copper infrastructure.
  2. There are many homes that cannot obtain landlines in rural areas due to a shortage of copper lines. Companies no longer invest or upgrade copper. Fiber costs less to deploy. Often, copper infrastructure is too brittle to maintain. To touch it is to break it. 
  3. The 25 megabits down/3 megabits up standard for residences was adopted by the FCC five years ago and will not be sufficient five years from now.  We should invest now in scalable, long-term infrastructure that will serve our needs for the next 30-40 years.
  1. No company should be given a monopoly as a condition of receiving funding.
  2. The ports in Washington state; the Utah UTOPIA Project; Ammon, Idaho and Huntsville, Alabama; and the Thundercloud project in West Virginia are examples of open-access projects.
  1. The FCC’s new broadband maps using shapefiles may add definition but are still provided by the industry, which has an incentive to exaggerate the areas that are currently served.
  2. Petrichor Broadband, whose members include local authorities made up of elected officials who are accountable to their constituents, are closer to the needs of their consumers and possess better information about where broadband exists.
  3. With the best of intentions, State Level Broadband offices, Broadband Action Teams (BAT) and local community leaders are easily distracted by mapping projects and speed tests. Maps showing where fiber is located will not solve the broadband deployment issue. Mapping at the state level showing who has received CAFI, II, and RDOF funding with timelines for deployment to hold companies accountable for deployment will. Deployment of open-access, competitive, free-trade infrastructure will bring urban pricing and services to rural areas and also place pressure on companies in monopoly franchise areas to better their services as well.
  4. In many mapping scenarios, state agencies are utilizing mapping tools that use census blocks and financial modeling to arrive at broadband deployment costs. The data output used from these maps can be highly inaccurate, failing to take into account pole placement, condition of poles and needed make-ready costs. This gives a false impression to local communities when trying to solve broadband deployment issues in their region.
  5. We need funding to conduct local needs assessments. If federal funding is used for mapping, criteria defining the data that should be collected and how it is used should be required. We see a lot of wasted time and money on deployment issues. Most people involved in this work are not working from a stake-in-the-ground proven model. Petrichor is. We are very interested in solving this issue nationally.
  1. NTIA has successfully administered broadband infrastructure projects working with state and local officials. 
  2. Providing additional broadband funding to NTIA would complement the work of the FCC and RUS while enabling involvement by state and local broadband programs.