Guest Commentary: Port of Chehalis Works for Greater Broadband Access

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This year, after much discussion and many public meetings, the Port of Chehalis updated our long-range strategic plan. One major addition to this plan is doing work to improve broadband internet access for residents and businesses in the port district. I’d like to take the opportunity to share why we’re doing this, how we’re doing this, and what the benefits to the public are.

Currently, broadband internet access in the area is best described as “hit and miss.” Some areas have access, and some do not, and some speeds are fast while others are painfully slow. This is because the for-profit telecom companies providing these services will only invest in the areas with the best rates of return. This is the appropriate way to run a for-profit business, but it’s a lousy way to provide what is now a necessary amenity for residents and businesses dispersed across a wide area.

There is a reason that today we operate water systems and road systems as publicly-owned utilities, because if you ran them for a profit, only the densest urban areas would support them. We need broadband access now more than ever because the demand for data transfer will be increasing exponentially as technology takes on a greater role in our everyday lives.

For 100, years public port districts have traditionally invested in bringing infrastructure such as roads, water, sewer, and electricity to areas that lack them to encourage economic growth and prosperity for the community.

Today broadband internet access via fiber optic cable is just as necessary as roads are to a modern business. Physical “widgets” have always needed a public road to access markets, and now today’s “digital widgets” need a “digital road” to get to market as well. Ports, in our work to boost business and help promote commerce, need to be building lanes on the Information Superhighway just as much as we need to build roads in our industrial parks.

So, what does this mean here? You’ll start to see the Port of Chehalis investing in broadband fiber infrastructure projects all around our area. Some will be at the neighborhood level, lighting up a street with high-speed access where current options are limited. Other projects will be larger backbone projects, linking Chehalis directly with the major internet nodes in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver B.C. These will all be what are known as “dark fiber” projects, where the port owns the cables and leases them to multiple private internet providers who the end user will get service from.



What does this mean for you, as a business or resident in the Chehalis port district? Project by project, we will begin adding fiber around the area that different companies can use to offer you high speed internet service. You will have more options, as multiple Internet Service Provider companies will compete for your business.

A century ago in Washington State, monopolies controlled the waterfronts and stifled economic growth. They sold access to the highest payer and left all other users unable to ship their goods to market. Our public ports were created to break those monopolies and create publicly-owned waterfront docks and wharfs where all businesses could get their goods to market. Now, commerce takes place across a “digital ocean” and your internet connection is that link to sell your goods on a world-wide market. Existing telecom monopolies stifle this commerce through lack of incentive to invest in new fiber infrastructure, while ports can create that “digital” dock or wharf that facilitates business.

The world of commerce is changing, and the best public ports are changing along with it to fulfill our original purpose: boosting business and job creation by helping to get goods to market. The Port of Chehalis is hard at work making this happen.

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Randy Mueller is the CEO of the Port of Chehalis. A Centralia HS graduate, he has an undergraduate degree from Washington State University, a Master of Real Estate Development degree from Portland State University and is currently completing his Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington. He lives in Chehalis with his wife Stacy and daughter Carly.