Businesses question dark fiber decision

EPHRATA — Grant County business community members asked the Grant County PUD commissioners to lift the nine-month moratorium on dark fiber Monday.

The commissioners stopped leasing dark fiber in May, while studying how it would impact the utility financially.

Dark fiber is fiber without any equipment attached. Companies leasing dark fiber control what type of machines they place at both ends of the line.

Quincy data centers owners Yahoo! and Microsoft use dark fiber.

With lit fiber, it’s sold through a provider, who controls what equipment is placed along the connections.

Debbie Doran-Martinez, Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce executive director, said lifting the ban is in the best interests of the PUD.

“It would provide sustainable revenue for the district, by leasing a portion of the dark fiber to those users who cannot or will not use our lit services,” she said. “We have less liability and overhead with dark fiber leases than with lit fiber leases.”

Also companies using dark fiber will bring high-paying jobs to the area, Doran-Martinez said.

Lynn Garza, with the Grant County Economic Development Council (EDC), agreed.

When Garza moved to the area, she worked for a job placement company, where she saw people trained in technical fields forced to take jobs below their education level.

“Many of those people moved over here from the west side (of the state), maybe they grew up here in a lot of cases … and frankly there were just no jobs in that industry,” Garza said. “The types of industries that are looking to lease that dark fiber are those types of industries. We have people in our community right now with the technical skills to fill those jobs.”

Garza said every data center job creates two-and-a-half more jobs in the community.

“That’s more than Boeing,” she said.

Andrew Metcalfe, the general manager of Zayo Bandwidth Northwest, also asked the commissioners to lift the moratorium on dark fiber. Zayo Bandwidth owns about 300 miles of dark fiber in the Spokane area.

He studied dark fiber prices from other public utilities and other entities around the Northwest, he said.

“It showed the Grant County existing fiber rate, if the moratorium was lifted, is on the high end of those rates,” he said. “We think that they’re fair.”

Before the moratorium was in place, Metcalfe’s former company, requested to lease fiber from the district, he said. The contract would have resulted in about $10,000 to $11,000 a month. Also the district would have received $105,000 in initial costs.

“Those rates exceed any of the other contracts we’ve signed with other public utility districts,” he said. “Those are Douglas County, Chelan County and Franklin County.”

Metcalfe said Zayo plans on installing its own dark fiber in the Quincy area, but doesn’t plan on going any further without leasing the PUD’s fiber.

While Commissioner Tom Flint supports lifting the moratorium, he said other commissioners still need to be convinced it’s in the best interests of the PUD and the rate payers.

“I want to let you know we take this very seriously,” he said. “We want to do the due diligence. The reality of what you all said captures at least a lot of my thoughts that lifting the moratorium is a catalyst for diversification.”

Commissioner Bob Bernd said this has been a difficult issue for him and he hasn’t taken it lightly. He said this has been primarily an issue in the Moses Lake area.

He said dark fiber revenue presently accounts for about $8,500 a month, or 0.5 percent of the PUD’s entire telecommunications revenue.

“So we may be able to double that,” Bernd said. “But there’s a lot of opportunity we could be missing in addition revenue for our lit system to get an extra $8,000 or $10,000 a month.”

Bernd said PUDs in Okanogan, Skagit and Mason counties only provide lit fiber service.

“Even given this, I had said from the onset that I was interested in trying to reach some kind of compromise on dark fiber,” he said. “We as a commission have asked our staff to try to come up that would offer a fair return to our owners, the rate payers and the citizens of Grant County, because they’ve made a (more than) $100 million investment in this system.”

Bernd said once the staff has worked with the companies and comes up with an agreement, he’ll be ready to re-examine the moratorium. The Grant County PUD staff may have a proposal for providing dark fiber later this week.