By: Mike Lewis May 18, 2021 at 10:39 AM May 18, 2021 at 5:36 PM
Bob Hunter does not need a pandemic, work from home, or distance learning program to understand the potential penetration of municipal broadband. He hears from employees of the Kitsap County government every day.
Hunter is the general manager of the Kitsap utility district in West Seattle. A few years ago, he led a wave of infrastructure improvements, connecting local government buildings, public schools, and hospitals to high-speed digital pipelines.
This work took several years. But the response was immediate.
"We had community members who worked in these places came to us and said,'Hey, how can we get this at home? Because my DSL sucks," Hunter recalled. "To be honest, this is what pushed us in this direction."
To a certain extent, this is also the reason for the development of Washington State. Two municipal broadband bills signed by Governor Jay Insley last week allowed local areas to become direct Internet service providers for the first time. To some extent, the roots of these new laws can be traced back to KPUD and Bainbridge Island MP Drew Hansen, who represented the region and sponsored one of the two bills.
Suddenly: Governor Insley has just signed my Public Broadband Act, so we have ended all restrictions on public broadband in Washington State! !
Next step: Contact the local government (utility district, port, county, etc.) and tell them you want public broadband.
Let's get it!
-Representative Drew Hansen (@RepDrewHansen), May 13, 2021
But Hunter's long-term plan is not what the telecommunications industry is worried about: transforming private, for-profit industries into public utilities. He wants to do for the local broadband what the transportation department does for the trucking company: We will build roads, and you use them to make money.
"I believe in open access to the network," he said. "As a utility company, we are good at infrastructure. This is what we do. They are very good at turning the Internet into a business. So why not involve broadband companies?"
Hansen's HB1336 came into effect on July 1, granting public utility districts, counties, towns, and port districts a legal authorization to provide users with retail broadband services in the same way as private companies such as Comcast.
In essence, Hansen’s bill gives municipalities the legal power to become Internet service providers. In addition, municipalities will be allowed to provide services inside and outside the regional boundaries.
Before the governor signed it, Washington was one of the few states that prohibited municipalities from providing direct-to-customer broadband access. The state's push to allow municipal broadband is consistent with the Biden administration's push to increase federal spending on various broadband plans, including expanding access and reducing monthly costs.
Large telecommunications companies have long opposed the expansion of public broadband at the state and federal levels because they believe that the government and its opportunities for taxpayer funding are unfairly competing with private companies. In addition, they believe that broadband speed, access, and cost are good.
In contrast, many local broadband customers, such as those in the KPUD serviced by Century Link, have nothing to protect from slow download speeds, unstable services, and high costs.
Nevertheless, Hunter of KPUD does not want to own the entire system. He knows that, like many people who track municipal broadband work, publicly managed broadband systems don’t always function as the public hopes.
His plan for Kitsap County is an extension of what the area has already done: laying fiber optic cables in all areas, and then opening up the system for use by Internet service providers.
Four years before the legislation, Kitsap PUD funded a project to connect some of its existing trunk lines to public buildings and extend them all the way to many residences. Since state law at the time prohibited utility companies from selling feeders directly to customers, it established an open access network, which meant that ISPs could lease space in the line and then charge customers for broadband services in turn.
Currently, customers in Kitsap County can choose between five ISPs. "Our whole model is to let PUD build the infrastructure-this is where we do well-and let private individuals compete on prices and services through our network," Hunter said.
This worked well until Pomeroy Republican Rep. Mary Dye approached him and said, "I like your model, but isn't it just broadband for the rich?"
Hunter was taken aback. He agreed that this is broadband for those who can afford it. Legally speaking, PUD cannot subsidize the homeowner's expenses. Reality began to haunt him.
"In the end, this is (the dye)'s true statement," Hunter said.
Therefore, KPUD began to seek federal funding to help subsidize the costs of those who could not afford it. At that time, district officials learned of a key limitation in the subsidy program administered by the Federal Communications Commission: The money can only go to Internet providers that have "retail relationships with end users"-which is exactly what Washington state law prohibits municipalities from. Regionally owned.
Nevertheless, this restriction did not become the top of the repair list until a full year later. At this time the epidemic came. The administrator began to close the school and switch to distance learning. Many children either lack Internet services in their communities or their families simply cannot afford them. The cracks in the system spread into canyons.
Hunter remembers the emergency meeting between KPUD and five school districts in Kitsap County in February 2020. "We asked them,'What can we do to help?'"
Aaron Leavell, the director of the Bremerton School District, intervened. The problem in his city is not the traffic problem. This is about affordability.
"When a pandemic hits," Leavell said in a recent interview, "it did expose the problem of not being able to access the Internet. This is a basic need for people."
Nationally, education experts say that a good indicator of possible lack of adequate Internet access is the level of student enrollment in free and reduced-price lunch programs. In the Bremerton School District last year, 2,781 out of 4,316 students used this type of meal plan, or 64%.
Leavell said that as schools closed, the need for better Internet access quickly became apparent. "We need to do something right away." The classification is provided to 510 local households in the form of cellular hotspots. But a long-term repair is needed, especially in remote rural communities in the county, where there are no cables and limited cellular network signals.
Representative Hansen, who also participated in the meeting with the district, realized that the long-term solution was to remove the state’s restrictions on municipalities so that the network could expand beyond the most profitable areas. In addition, the districts are given the right to charge customers directly, providing low-income families with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential subsidies.
We feel that everyone has won. Hunter worked with Angela Bennink, KPUD's telecommunications manager, to come up with a new idea that would provide both subsidies and open access.
The district plans to send bills to customers of broadband providers that use its fiber optic lines. In turn, the school district will charge the broadband company actual fees. This will allow KPUD to receive low income and infrastructure subsidies, and still allow private companies to participate in creating service packages for customers. In addition, it also gives KPUD the right to compete with any ISP or drive it out of the network to provide insufficient services or access.
"We think everyone has won," Hunter said.
But an unusual problem still exists.
Although Hansen’s bill gave municipalities broad legal powers to become Internet service providers, Governor Insley also signed a competition bill SB5383. The bill seems to give existing Internet service providers a competitive advantage.
In other words, it may restrict municipal service providers from intervening to provide services when existing-and possibly insufficient-Internet services already exist. Hansen, a lawyer, said that after these bills are adjusted to be compatible, they will jointly expand consumer choices and services.
Livel of Bremerton School District certainly hopes so. He said that one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it seems to make the public aware of the importance of access to the Internet similar to the importance of access to water and electricity. He said that administrators in his area knew that Internet services between students were not always available.
"We always knew this was a problem," he said. "But other day-to-day affairs, the imminent needs, put this priority aside. We never started (fixing) it."
He said that then the pandemic happened and "the priority list was completely rewritten."
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