Rural Internet Viable With House Bill’S Help

Not every corner of our region throbs with economic vitality. And that’s a problem, one that well deserves the attention of leaders like Gov. Gary Locke. To his credit, Locke has made it a priority to fashion tools for economic development in “the other Washington.”

The new economy relies on telecommunications. In places like Seattle, high-speed Internet and phone services are abundant.

In Eastern and southwestern Washington, however, some people can’t even get basic telephone service, let alone high-speed Internet service. US West has been pulling out of areas where customers are sparse, costs are high and profits are skimpy.

In these areas of the state, telecommunication service depends on much smaller, privately owned companies that face problems completely foreign to the regulatory issues in big, booming cities.

Some of these companies began a century ago as little mom-and-pop cooperatives that strung wires from grain-elevator towns out to isolated farm houses. Today, they’re still in business. And now their customers need Internet access, as well as basic phone service. These services are essential if rural communities are going to keep up with the new economy and become stronger contributors to our region. Trouble is, the big, commercial Internet service providers have shown no interest in serving rural areas.

This presents a challenge, one the Legislature can help solve. But it has to be careful. It has to make the effort, as Gov. Locke did, to tailor a remedy that will bring high-speed Internet pipelines, while preserving basic phone service.

A promising solution is found in House Bill 2880, which won approval Friday in the House Committee on Technology, Telecommunications and Energy.

The bill would authorize Public Utility Districts to begin offering certain telecomm services. These districts already provide power in many rural areas. So, their poles are everywhere. If they hung fiberoptic cable from those poles, the Internet could arrive.

However, it wouldn’t be fair, or wise, to let PUDs offer retail phone service. They don’t pay taxes, as the small, private phone companies must.

Those private companies must survive and if possible flourish, so that basic phone service throughout rural areas will continue - and extend to places where it still does not exist.

The solution: Let PUDs enter only the wholesale phone business. Then, as PUDs hang fiberoptic lines on their poles, the little private phone companies could tap these lines, could negotiate fees with the PUDs, and could introduce high-capacity telecomm service to their retail customers.

This is a win-win solution. It creates a new service opportunity for the PUDs, assures continued health for the small, private telephone companies and offers the “other Washington” an onramp to the new economy.