Washington State Votes To End Restriction On Community Broadband (vice.com) 42
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Washington State lawmakers have voted to kill telecom-industry backed restrictions that limit the reach of community broadband. The Public Broadband Act (HB1336) passed the state Senate with a 27-22 vote on Sunday, after passing the House with a vote of 60-37 last February. State Representative Drew Hansen applauded the bill's passage on Twitter, stating it "reverses decades of bad policy" and opens the door to better, cheaper broadband. "Washington was one of only 18 states that restricted local governments from serving the public by providing public broadband," Hansen told Motherboard. "My bill eliminates that restriction."
In Washington, a twenty-one year old law let some local governments build their own broadband networks, but prohibited local utilities from delivering broadband to customers directly. Hansen, who was also the primary sponsor of the state's new net neutrality law, says his bill finally eliminates those unnecessary limits entirely. "The Public Broadband Act broadly authorizes all local governments to provide broadband to anyone -- people who are totally unserved, people who have some internet access but it's not affordable or reliable -- any people at all," Hansen told Motherboard. "Under the Public Broadband Act, Washington governments have completely unrestricted authority to provide broadband to the public."
In Washington, a twenty-one year old law let some local governments build their own broadband networks, but prohibited local utilities from delivering broadband to customers directly. Hansen, who was also the primary sponsor of the state's new net neutrality law, says his bill finally eliminates those unnecessary limits entirely. "The Public Broadband Act broadly authorizes all local governments to provide broadband to anyone -- people who are totally unserved, people who have some internet access but it's not affordable or reliable -- any people at all," Hansen told Motherboard. "Under the Public Broadband Act, Washington governments have completely unrestricted authority to provide broadband to the public."
Not quite... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's still one complication. A second bill sponsored by Sen. Wellman that "would do much less to eliminate barriers to municipal broadband solutions" passed the House on Sunday and had previously passed the Senate, said an article on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Networks website. "The two competing bills have been sent to the state governor and it is expected one will be vetoed," the article said.
Re: Not quite... (Score:2)
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Both bills passed the state Senate and House -- the legislature's idea of reconciliation was apparently to let the governor decide on one, both, or neither.
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It's very easy to build community broadband without raising taxes. It's much easier for community broadband to fund itself with ISP fees. That's exactly what is happening where I live. A symmetrical gig with no data caps is going to cost me $20-$30 a month less than Mediacom's 200mb down (don't remember the upstream) with a 2 TB cap. It's all funded by the ISP's that share the infrastructure, and taxes aren't going up by a single cent.
Granted, low income households are going to struggle with anything short
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, they got costs of wiring houses ridiculously low. One house a half mile away from the main road was wired for just $5k, including all the materials and work. The price of fiber was something like $0.4 per foot for a direct burial cable, with the rest of the cost going towards digging the trench for it.
There's simply no excuse not to wire almost every household in the US with fiber optics. I guess the only valid exceptions are off-grid settlements in inaccessible areas.
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running a trench down a rural road is one thing. come to the city and start trying to dig trenches or hang cables and your $0.4 is going to seem like a joke.
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Community broadband is real competition for the cable companies, thus their dislike of the idea. As regards low income households...well, it's community broadband, so if the community decides, they can implement a low income offering for those folks. I know my community would do something like that in a minute.
We have a couple of community broadbands near us (sadly, not in my community), and their offerings are very competitive with the big players. The problem is that they haven't upgraded the infrastruct
Ars Technica article link (Score:2)
Link: Victory for municipal broadband as Wash. state lawmakers end restrictions [arstechnica.com]. (Apr. 13, 2021)
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"The two competing bills have been sent to the state governor and it is expected one will be vetoed," the article said.
Washington is a red state masquerading as a blue it has, by far, the most regressive taxation in the country, and every time it’s put to a vote, the good progressives vote to keep it that way,
Do as we say, not as we do, peons.
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Starlink (Score:3)
Starlink will be the new last mile. Nothing to dig up. The question is how much of the sky can you see...?
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how much of the sky can you see
In Washington State ... none of it.
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In western Washington State ... none of it.
FTFY
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In western Washington State, the only side that matters ... none of it in Winter, some of it in Spring and Fall, and all of it in Summer.
FTFY and make it accurate,
Re:Starlink (Score:4, Informative)
In western Washington State, the only side that matters...
You are correct, of course. Ruby-red Eastern Washington would be Mississippi North if it wasn't for massive government subsidies and an influx of undocumented workers, both of which the right wing hates, amirite? Also, Blue America accounts for 71% of America's GDP [dailykos.com].
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There's public FTTH in Chelan and Douglas counties. The last mile is operated by the PUD, using primarily overhead connections, running on their poles. It works pretty well. People have the choice of something like half a dozen internet and television providers over the system.
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I'm getting FTTH installed in a few weeks. Symmetrical gig, no data caps, no artificial limits. I'm stoked.
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The last mile is operated by the PUD ... running on their poles.
Oh come on! You people are doing this on purpose!
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That’s nothing, I got a PUSY router and a DIK ethernet cable, and all day yesterday, I kept putting my DIK in the PUSY. I kept doing it over and over until I finally made it light up. Afterward, I was spent, so I took a nap.
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Grant County as well.
ZIPP they call it, or they did. Now it just seems to be High Speed Internet. They are still finishing the further corners of the county.
https://www.grantpud.org/getfi... [grantpud.org]
Re:Starlink (Score:4, Interesting)
Starlink-Role model. (Score:2)
More importantly would we have had this kind of movement if there hadn't been a Starlink to show just how deficient the current system was?
Lumen Technologies (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever heard of Lumen Technologies? Their website [lumen.com] loudly proclaims,
"THE PLATFORM FOR AMAZING THINGS"
"Designed for the 4th Industrial Revolution"
"Amazing AR and VR engagements. Shelves that restock automatically."
"Improve team productivity by 29%"
What kind of miracle sauce....
Wait a minute...
It's literally CenturyLink. They changed their name in September of last year.
Nice try!
Good luck with maintenance/customer service (Score:2)
Building things is one thing, taking care of problems quite another. Wanna go without a connection for as long as you go without a local pothole being filled?
Real Customer Service: consequences (Score:2)
Local monopolies have no consequences and their customer service only recently improved from being horrible! Low profit areas won't even have roads in your analogy. Hell, if it weren't for regulations they'd still not have phones or electricity.
We the people, all tolerate pot holes and are too cheap to pay to eliminate them; let the next generation deal with our crumbling infrastructure. OUR government often reflects the voters, the bad as well as the good.
In my city, if the snow plows fail for too long fr
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Even the most sucky monopoly has to provide the service that is worth the money. Most obviously I am not going to pay for a connection that doesn't work. It also has to be good enough to ward off potential competition and service boundary competition where other providers can extend their networks cheaply. Comcast couldn't cope with all the Zoom calls last year, so Sonic went and laid fiber on the hill where I live, I don't think anyone is going back.
I do wish my mayor was gone for making kids run across th
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Comcast was voted worst customer service for like, 5 years running by consumers union members. If you’re going full-on FUD on the customer service angle, then I don’t envy you. You definitely have your work cut out for you.
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Wanna go without a connection for as long as you go without a local pothole being filled?
No, I already have Comcast, but thanks.
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These are utilities, they're funded by fees not taxes. Our cottage is in Snohomish County, and serviced by the Snohomish Public Utility District. SnoPUD has better and cheaper service with fewer and shorter outages than Puget Sound Energy Inc. Since SnoPUD has kept everything internal to the company rather than farming service and maintenance out to low-bid contractors like Potelco they can have a downed line in a remote corner of the county fixed before PSE has even managed to dispatch anyone. In any l
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Want potholes fixed more quickly? Pay more taxes.
I see that you have not lived in California.
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We have PUD fiber here,
Heh. I used to have it but I pulled it all the time and they cut my off.
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In large part that's because Seattle was one of the first areas to go all-in on buried utility lines. Being early, documentation is crap. My neighborhood in Bellevue was built in the late-'50s, when they wanted to pull fiber here a couple years ago it took over a year just for them to map where the power lines were buried, and throughout the process they kept cutting through phone and cable conduits and having to stop, dig them up, and fix them before they could proceed again. Good luck with somewhere li
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Capitol hill has essentially no buried power or internet.
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Don't get there often now with COVID, but my friends' house has buried utilities (barely, he hit a conduit trying to plant a shrub). OK, then First Hill, parts of the U District, most of Alki, I think all of Ballard now, of course all of downtown and the SLU, most of Magnolia, etc.
This is a friendly reminder (Score:3)
This is a friendly reminder that your payments to legislators are not up to date in Washington State. Please send a suitcase full of cash to the lawyer who handles my hookers, or a "perfectly legitimate" campaign contribution to the address of record. Thank-you for using Washington State's legislative services, and please be mindful that if your payment is not received by the end of the month an additional fee may apply in addition to the lawyer rental fee, even if you have your own lawyer.
In related news, flaming monkeys are flying out of (Score:2)
When I read this, I immediately said “no way, it’s gotta be a mistake”, then I saw the competing bill thing and realized they’d jumped the gun. I guarantee you that this is the one that will get vetoed. Washington Democrats suck the corporate dick so hard they make Republicans blush. They’re all as corrupt as the day is long, but nobody really cares so long as they have a D by their name . There ain’t no how, no way, they forgo holding our asscheeks apart while Comcast