Members of ArlFiber who were delegates to the 2020 state convention of the Virginia Democratic Party submitted a resolution on ensuring high-speed affordable broadband for all by expanding community owned networks. You can read the resolution in full here, but the calls for action were as follows:
Therefore, be it Resolved that the 8th Congressional District Convention calls on the Virginia Delegation to United States Congress: US Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, along with US Representatives Don Beyer, Gerry Connolly, Elaine Luria, Donald MacEachin, Bobby Scott, Abigail Spanberger, and Jennifer Wexton to pursue the following[†] in Congress:
- Enact legislation that clearly stipulates the right of municipalities, counties, and states to build their own broadband networks and preempts all local and state restrictions on the territorial and customer expansion of those community networks; and
- Create a multi-billion dollar grant fund that provides funds exclusively to electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profit organizations, tribes, cities, counties, and other state subdivisions to build the fiber infrastructure necessary to bring high-speed broadband to unserved areas, underserved areas, or areas with minimal competition, while conditioning those grants on 1) strong labor, wage and sourcing standards to ensure that federal funding goes toward creating good-paying union jobs and 2) on universal service, provisioning minimum speeds, privacy standards and affordability; and
- Continue to seek passage of the “The Save the Internet Act” and apply pressure on the FCC to restore net neutrality and rescind rules that serve to erode internet user privacy;
- Enact legislation that will require ISPs to report service and speeds down to the household level, as well as aggregate pricing data, and makes the data available to the public and stipulates regular audits to ensure accurate reporting; and
- Enact legislation to prohibit the range of maneuvers giant private providers use to unfairly squeeze out competition, hold governments hostage, and drive up prices by returning control of utility poles and conduits to cities, prohibiting landlords from making side deals with private ISPs to limit choices in their properties, and banning companies from limiting access to wires inside buildings; and
- Enact legislation that ensures that all new buildings are fiber-ready so that any network can deliver service there and institutes a “Dig Once” policies to require that conduit is laid anytime the ground is opened for a public infrastructure project; and
be it further Resolved that the 8th Congressional District Convention calls on Governor Ralph Northam of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the elected representatives of the General Assembly of Virginia to pursue the following:
- Identify all laws within the Code of Virginia that currently pose an obstacle to any and all forms of community broadband and pass legislation to amend or eliminate them[‡]; and
- Significantly increase state financial support and create a dedicated funding source for the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative program to provide infrastructure grants and technical assistance for localities in Virginia to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks and to retrofit existing structures to accommodate Fiber-To-The-Home/Premises wireline connections; and
- Enact legislation to prohibit the range of maneuvers giant private providers use to unfairly squeeze out competition, hold governments hostage, and drive up prices by returning control of utility poles and conduits to cities, prohibiting landlords from making side deals with private ISPs to limit choices in their properties, and banning companies from limiting access to wires inside buildings; and
- Enact legislation that ensures that all new buildings are fiber-ready so that any network can deliver service there and institutes a “Dig Once” policies to require that conduit is laid anytime the ground is opened for a public infrastructure project.
The state resolutions committee adopted the resolution in whole. You can read it on pages 38-39 of the state party’s resolution package here.
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