In a move that would do more harm for long-term broadband access than good, SB 5671 would remove private companies from being eligible to receive grants and loans provided under the broadband service expansion program. The program, established to help expand broadband access in Washington, originally awarded grants and loans to businesses, nonprofits, local governments, tribes, cooperative associations, and public-private partnerships. By nixing the eligibility of private companies to attain these grants, this bill would tip the scales particularly in the favor of government-owned networks (GONs). 

While GONs have the potential to provide a lower cost internet rate for an area in the short term, the bigger picture must be considered. 

• Long term sustainability
  The major infrastructure costs of setting up broadband happen on initial establishment. Thus, when you’re servicing a lower density area, the initial cost is spread among fewer people, raising the rates. In the short term this can cause GONs to offer better rates to unserved areas, since they operate off subsidies and taxes rather than having to consider market viability, but in the long term, they can often end up causing extra cost and lower speed rates due to their lack of expertise and investment in the same way private broadband does.  
  
  It's also worth noting that while it’s laudable to increase access to higher speed networks as a rule, we can’t forget that the allocation of resources in society is best dictated by prices as information, rather than government mandate. For instance, let’s say a particular neighborhood has 100 MBPS speed options, and a GON wants to establish the capability for it to receive 250 MPBS speeds. With this type of subsidy and a less clear long-term profit motive, they may build when only a fraction of the low-density area may even want the higher speed option. In this way, taxpayers would continue to be on the hook to subsidize a large expense for very small benefit. Were a private company offered the same subsidy, it might better consider how to future-proof the infrastructure so that the offering becomes sustainable without government assistance.   
   
• Limited resources
  Washington’s broadband access rate is extremely high, with nearly full coverage for lower end speeds of 100 MBPS down and 20 MBPS up, and just about 90% coverage for speeds of 250 MBPS down and 25 MBPS up. The vast majority of Washingtonians who need internet access have it. By building broadband infrastructure through non-experts, we necessarily take up resources (poles, wiring, and public land) that then prevent other companies from using that space. This crowds out private enterprises to provide for these markets. Since any GON will rely on taxpayers for upgrading the infrastructure, consumers can easily be left with the choice between one affordable/taxpayer subsidized internet option which will be outdated and slow, or a more modern private option that has little competition and thus lower incentive to reduce rates.
    
• New technological developments
  New technologies can disrupt the need to build out traditional options. For individuals who need high speed broadband access in unserved areas, options like Starlink, soon Amazon Kuiper and others are providing a low-cost option that does not require local investment. This means that private companies such as SpaceX and Amazon not only offer competition to traditional broadband companies, causing lower prices across the board, but they also don’t have to wait for a particular low-density area to get enough of a customer-base to provide service, since the satellite technology is (for the most part) location agnostic.  
   

All of these points illustrate that while well-intentioned, GONs can often be a short-term fix with long-term consequences.  These types of programs may start with lofty goals but end up spiraling into failure. It hearkens to the 2000s with Seattle’s failed public Wi-Fi program, which sought to provide public Wi-Fi networks across Seattle. Even while the initial pilot provided slow, unreliable options that were mostly ignored by residents, the city doubled down on the ballooning cost, attempting to expand for nearly seven years before it finally was shut down. It’s not that providing internet access across the city was unfeasible for anyone – local cafes (significantly, Starbucks) starting offering free Wi-Fi as a benefit, soon effectively covering the city with more reliable, better network access than what the municipality tried to provide. As Mike Wendy of MediaFreedom.org put it, ““Muni-provision of communications services is an old idea. Slapping ‘wi-fi’ on the project changes nothing. The underlying economics of taxpayer-supported technology networks are, for the most part, unsustainable, risky business. They have always been that way. Moreover, they heavily distort the marketplace, making entry by would-be competitors, or even incumbents seeking to grow options, that much harder.”  

This bill only further accelerates this type of “unsustainable, risky business.” This is a de facto handout to GONs over private businesses, in spite of the benefit private enterprise offers broadband customers. In particular, this bill would hurt small ISPs who may try to set up a clientele in an underserved area where bigger ISPs have yet to invest. Precluding them from receiving the same benefit as a GON for the same purpose is punitive and raises costs for everyone in the long run.