Hello, I hope you are all doing well today. I wanted to share this article with you that highlights how specifically Washington State Laws and the Washington State Broadband Office have been setup to literally waste our money protecting big telecoms and even paying them to install obsolete services and lay claim to areas of the state they may never actually provide service to.
The State Broadband Office doesn't really want to hear from you either. This is obvious if you go to their website where you'll only find a phone number and be directed to PR reps. instead of the director or other State Broadband Office employees if you try to engage them in discourse on this topic. Still, I am going to request that you do exactly that. Here is their contact page.
https://www.commerce.wa.gov/contact-us/
Here is my list of items I am going to request they change.
1. They should provide no funding to any entity that is installing obsolete technology like DSL or Coax cable. Right now they are literally throwing away tens of millions of dollars giving existing providers, mostly big telecom, money to install obsolete tech.
2. They should NOT allow telecoms to lay claim to any area and keep communities from building their own fiber networks as they are now. Currently a telecom can lay claim to an area without doing any work in that area for 6 years with virtually no penalty for pulling out in 6 years if they just don't feel like providing service. We have one specific example where Ziply has laid claim to a both under and unserved rural community in  Whatcom County that wanted to install their own network. The state awarded millions to Ziply, who at best will provide obsolete hybridized DSL based services to that area, but Ziply has admitted that this area is also NOT a priority to them. So more than likely Ziply, like most big telecoms, is simply abusing the WA State laws to prevent communities from building better networks for themselves.
3. That the concept of overbuilding be removed from their language and that other technologies not be considered equivalent to fiber because they're not. They say they have no competition laws in place to keep areas from overbuilding, but how can you "overbuild" if you're using fiber against an obsolete service like DSL or Coax? This language was obviously put in place by the State Broadband Office to justify giving corporate welfare to special interests for obsolete services.
4. That they establish accurate RRUL network load testing thresholds for services instead of allowing big telecom to claim download only speeds for areas that don't hold up to testing. The threshold should be 100 Mbits symmetrical with less than 30 ms of latency and should hold up to a load test for at least 10 minutes. This fiber to the premises service should cost no more than $40 a month for 100 Mbit, $70 for Gigabit, and the install fee should be no more than $1,000.
5. That corporations worth more than $1 billion not be eligible for funding in the first place. They are not charities and can afford to upgrade on their own. The current worth of Comcast is about $280 billion, CenturyLink/Lumen about $12 billion, the list goes on. These companies do not need corporate welfare. They have had their chance to do a good job and have chosen not to time and time again. It's time to stop wasting our tax dollars by giving it to them in corporate welfare.