I agree.

This is Mayor Comcast we're talking about here. Fuckin' fuggedaboudit.

I agree. If McGinn had taken a stance like this it would have been great, but he had a re-election to try winning, and chose to hype a different angle. Ah well, here we are where most of us said we'd be no matter who won.

If both Comcast and CenturyLink remain uninterested...

there's a understatement to enter into the big book of understatements. Comcast and friends will undo, fight, legally outmaneuver, destroy, discredit, bribe, and probably hire the yakuza to prevent any other city from becoming their competitor. they let a few slip through before they achieved corporate godhood, but never again.

Not sure about Comcast, Goldy, but CenturyLink has actually been trying pretty hard to build out their fiber network. It's just that the city has some outdated rules in place regarding placement of telecom cabinets in the right of way: http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/centuryl….

If SDOT moved faster, thousands of people would have faster broadband today on Beacon Hill and the Central District.

Not sure about Comcast, Goldy, but CenturyLink has actually been trying to build faster Internet, but they keep getting stymied by the city, due to an outdated rule involving placing telecom cabinets in the right of way: http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/centuryl….

The culprit here is SDOT, which needs to move much faster in changing this rule. Sadly, thousands of people up on Beacon Hill and the Central District have had broadband access curtailed because the city can't move fast enough to fix this regulation.

Ok Murray, show us you care, make it a utility!

@6, totally nailed it. Here on Beacon Hill, we've been working with CenturyLink trying to get a couple demonstration projects underway. But SDOT wouldn't budge, no doubt wanting to keep legacy providers out of the picture, to clear the way for the mayor's favorite, Gigabit Square.

But now, with both McGinn and G2 gone, all Mayor Murray has to do is call up his SDOT director and say the word. We could have great broadband here on the hill before the year's out.

It is well past time for Internet to be treated as a utility. Internet is more essential to many families and businesses than the telephone.

What, you mean a $350 install fee and no charges for 5 years on slower 5/1 internet wasn't enough to attract investors ? Considering Comcast would have charged at least $480 during those 5 years just to rent their stupid cable modem it was going to be a very enticing nearly-free internet service.

http://gigabitseattle.com/gigabit-square…
Gigabit Squared’s simplified fiber network pricing plans for Seattle will be structured as follows:

Installation Charge: Installation charges will be waived for customers signing a one-year contract for 100 Mbps service or greater. Otherwise, a $350 installation fee is required.
Service Plan Options:

Plan A:

5 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload: No charge for 60 months
5/1 Mbps services are transferrable to new renters or owners
After 60 months renters or owners can convert to a 10 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload service plan for only $10 per month

This really is a call for something to be owned "by the people"... if only we knew of someone in power in the city government who was interested in collective ownership of something that could produce jobs/a benefit to the society.

@6 & 8 - fwiw SDOT just (like 2 days ago) updated the Director's Rule about Telecommunication Cabinets. You can see it here: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/dr… It's the first one in the list. The update has been in the works for awhile but it's now a go.

@11: Well played sir... Well played. And if only this hypothetical person were on the Seattle City Light committee...

Tacoma didn't, no offense to them! They did something amazing that probably saved the city from total business destruction.

They build a fiber/coax hybrid, in which a fiber-distribution network was created to serve both electrical distribution needs (monitoring and other purposes), and then coax cable for the final mile to the home because of cost of optical terminals when they deployed.

All fiber makes sense now, because it's been proven and affordable.

The history of City Light has been all about citizen involvement.

In the 30's, an organization called the "friends of City Light" had a regular weekly radio program that caused the recall of a mayor.

In the 50's, the people of Seattle voted to make City Light the sole provider of power.

In the 70's, citizen oversight saved the utility from itself by making them pull out of WPPSS and mothball a plan to build a nuclear power plant on an island in the sound.

In the 90's, ratepayer pressure made the utility sell off their interest in the Centralia coal plant, which helped make City Light the first and only carbon neutral utility in the nation.

City Light owns the poles and conduit that brings electricity to Seattle, and that is the same system that brings both Centurylink and Comcast to us. City Light has the billing and field infrastructure to provide the nuts-and-bolts part of this service.

It's definitely something to think about....

@6
According to the article you link, Centurylink says the equipment for the 60 DSL upgrade projects delayed since the city began requiring that neighbors agree to the installation, would serve only 21,000 customers.

The article and photo with the article suggest at least two refrigerator sized utility cabinets are required for each project. That's 120 non trivial new obstructions dotting our streets, with many more potentially required since 21,000 customers is but a slice of the market.

While it sucks not to have good service, it sucks even more for eveyone to essentially be forced into sustaining the outdated technology of the local single family residential internet duopoly of Comcast and Centurylink. Stucturally limited by their obsolescent network technology, these providers can't upgrade speeds, even with the addition of cumbersome hardware boxes in public right of ways, much beyond 200 Mbps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_ac…).

Light fiber easily offers I Gbps. An installed light fiber network such as the city owns now will provide better, cheaper service than either Comcast or Centurylink can ever provide without cutting their profit margins and using those funds to rebuild their networks with fiber. That won't happen.

Instead, they will do everything possilbe to maintain, and leverage their duopoly control of the local single family residential broadband market to make people settle with less speed for more money. Due to the limitations of their hardware, that is their only option. We don't have to accept this. The fiber is already installed. It's value is just waiting to be tapped. We could fund the buildout ourselves. The savings would make it one of the best financial investments we will ever make in our lives. But even if Gigabit ^2's proposed prices (see @10 ) were raised somewhat to interest more outside investors (and there is no conclusive evidence yet that that's necessary), the fiber based service rates would still be a fraction of the rates for service over coaxial or telco cables.

Now, I spend $49 a month for a stated 5 Mbps from Comcast/Xfinity. I just recently switched from Centurylink, where I was paying the same for a stated 3 Mbps, which never clocked in at more than 2.3 Mbps. That's $600 a year. Even if Gigabit's proposed rate for 5 Mbps were pushed up from a $350 to a $450 onetime installation fee with 5 years of service at no additional cost, I would save $2500 over five years. That for the lowest tier of service. The saving rates multiply exponentially for anyone wishing faster service. And note that the higher bandwidth offerings from Gigabit were for symmetrical service, i.e., the same data rate for uploading as for downloading. That is where the value is for business seeking online markets who will be able to service high customer demand very economically.

We are foolish to not use the city's existing fiber. Just as we are foolish to think either Comcast or Centurylink will ever be able to provide more than a small fraction of the service the city's fiber can provide right now at anything near the same price point.

@16,
considering how much of the city offers centurylink and comcast service already, there's plenty of "refrigerator-size boxes" about already. Where possible, see if cabinets can be combined or incorporated with other things like bus stops. If the boxes were really owned by the city, they could probably have more force to just offer free internet/cable to the owner of the property the box sits on, plant some rhododendrons around it, and call it a day.

I'd like to see a detailed business plan developed and put forward by City Light on the development, installation maintenance and sales of a city wide system. The city government's only interest is going to be about revenue replacement that it would have received from Clink and Comcast. That should be easily replaced in a city wide system. I can't see why muni's couldn't be issued and easily sold to support the financing of the build out and startup. The big question is...can City Light provide inexpensive, universal highspeed service? Need to see a business plan.

Fairhaven dear, it doesn't work that way. Just as in the instances I cited above in post 15, the change has to come from the outside. That's the point of public ownership. We do what you tell us to do, then we develop the business plan.....

And the junior council person is the one who oversees City Light. Considering who that is, it seems like a great opportunity to me.

Come on, Sawant, the time is now.

CVD, I have absolutely no idea what you are arguing about. I think you are just trying to create an argument for argument sake.

The idea can come from within or from the outside, and you are correct in stating the idea must have outside support. Otherwise it will never get off the ground. As you suggested, it certainly makes sense to nominate SCL to be the public entity to create and maintain this system

However this is project that will likely require public financing of one sort or another. That probably means the issuing bonds. Issuers and bond investors will want to see a plan that indicates the quality and degree of the risk of their investment of this project.

In the end you still need a business plan. I honestly don't care who oversees it. Just as long as they take ownership and don't fuck it up. They need to have the proper skillset that ensures people are getting the best value for the money they are investing.

"Lot's"

@16: It's almost as if corporations are LYING to us and their claims wouldn't make service any faster or cheaper! That couldn't possibly be the case, free marketeers would never parrot corporate propaganda at us in their lust for trashing regulations of any sort..

Fairhaven dear, calm yourself. I have no argument with you. I am simply stating a fact: if the public wants a public agency to do something, the public has to make it known to that agency. Once they have, that agency will develop a business plan that is based on the criteria the public has established.

As an example, from the 1920's until the 1970's, City Light sold appliances at cost, and repaired them for free. This was done in the interest of increasing the electrical load, which brought the cost of power down.

In the mid 70's, the public determined that they wanted the utility to promote conservation, so the appliance sales and service division was discontinued (it should be noted that this "consumer movement" happened in large part because of the hearty financial support of the private sector appliance dealers and repair people who had long resented "the government" cutting into their market share, and used the 70's energy crisis as a catilyst)

As a result of that, public policy was set in stone: no competition with the private sector on retail products other than the sale of kilowatt hours. So If the public wants the utility to start offering broadband, the public needs to establish that. No business plan before that direction is given.

Mz Vel-DuRay, whom do we contact (Murray and or City Light), and what would be the most effective means of contact?

CVD, voters need to see a cost-benefit analysis. Outside support is dependent on voters understanding that SCL sponsored citywide broadband is in their individual and family's best financial interest. They need to know how much it is going to cost them on a monthly basis. However you can't give them an honest assessment what it will cost until you create a business plan that outlines those costs and benefits to each voter. Lastly, you need to determine if the city is even capable of creating a cost effective and efficient system.

Honestly, CVD. You and I are aiming for and likely want the same thing: Ultra low cost, city wide, high speed broadband service. The only difference between us is that you are at the first chapter of the story and I am
three chapters ahead.

Catalina, is the history of city light you highlight written down in more detailed narrative form anywhere? I'd like to read more.

Mayor Murray has killed the project involving Gigabit Squared as the $52,000 they owe the city, is about to be sold into collections. But he is not going to kill the idea of leasing out the dark fiber, except when they revive the bidding process, we'll have actual scrutiny involved when selecting the company that gets to build it. Cant help shake the feeling that because companies like CondoInternet charge $120 for gigabit service (in select areas of downtown) and Gigabit Squared offered to do it for $60, they won the bid. McGinn didnt need to go any further, who cared if the Gigabit Squared no experience, who cared if they didnt have the capital to build it, who cared if their Chicago fiber project was already in the process of falling apart, $60 gigabit service was just too good to pass up.

And the mayor kept promoting Gigabit Seattle, all the way up to the election. Mayor didnt mention anything about their lack of funding, he simply pouted about how Comcast donated money to Murray and if elected, Murray could kill the project. He played on peoples hate strings for Comcast just to get votes and it worked, it just didn't work well enough.

McGinn was also wrong in suggesting that the city could wire itself for fiber if the project failed, in addition to providing the service (citing Seattle City Light as an example) when im pretty sure state law forbids this. Sure Tacoma wired it self for fiber (though its not 100% fiber, its FTTN, not FTTH), but they DO NOT provide the actual TV or Internet service, thats left to other private companies who simply pay for access to the fiber, which Tacoma offers on the cheap.

Fairhaven dear, that book hasn't been written yet. The council would have to tell someone to start writing it. That's how it works. You can't start a new business line without legislation and a budget to support it.

Ms. Rand, Councilmember Sawant oversees City Light.

Dedalus, check out "Power for the People", written by the good folks at History Link. http://www.amazon.com/Power-People-Histo…

Kinison, I'm not sure if state law forbids it or Tacoma just didn't want to go there. After all, it probably takes a number of highly paid employees to do something like that in-house. The state utility commission is pretty strict about what utilities can and cannot do, but the municipal utilities are not regulated by them.

Of all Seattle's oddities, I favor City Light and Catalina Vel! I especially enjoy visiting the Seattle neighborhood of Nehalem just before entering the meaty part of the North Cascade Scenic Loop. SCL should pay her to serve tea and cookies and offer history lessons beside the decommissioned steam locomotive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newhalem,_W…

@14

The only reason why Tacoma went with the fiber/coax option, was that Corning's ClearCurve fiber cable wasnt available until 2007. The introduction of that type of fiber cable basically paved the way for FTTH installs like the ones we see with Verizon and Google. However, compared to COAX, its pricey as fuck and in high demand.

@30

You spend 100% of the staggering costs of laying down fiber, you'll want to recoup those costs to pay off whatever 20-30 year bond you issued just to get it up and running. Now a Fiber/Coax FTTN network, thats far more affordable, so your not in a hurry to pay that off, you can easily charge for access on the cheap, which is what Tacoma did and still they could afford to upgrade their headend to Docsis 3.0 equipment for even faster speeds.

Plus, what Tacoma is doing, is working quite well for them and its citizens. Maybe in 10 years they'll consider doing last mile with fiber.

BTW, Gigabit CEO resigned today.

http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/gigabit-squ…

It sounds like the company is about to fully implode.

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/bob-dyer-…

Notice that Mark Ansboury is also implicated in this failure reported back in October. Amazing that nobody noticed this before the election.

@28: "McGinn was also wrong in suggesting that the city could wire itself for fiber if the project failed, in addition to providing the service (citing Seattle City Light as an example) when im pretty sure state law forbids this."

In other words, you're pretty sure he's wrong, but you have no idea of this. Care to state which law explicitly states this, or are you going based off Comcast/CenturyLink's interpretation of State law?

Entirely predictable failure given that the Akron Connect CFO leading Gigabit Squared needed to demonstrate he'd learned past lessons.

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/bob-dyer-…

Belanger says OneCommunity never adjusted to new information that came along. For instance, he says, when it became obvious that placing access points on FirstEnergy’s light poles would be far more expensive than expected, the business model wasn’t changed.

“They sold the city on this great vision, and when it was clear it wasn’t going to happen, they never updated it. They just kept getting funding.”

In 2009, OneCommunity, a nonprofit operation that got most of its funding from federal tax dollars, paid its president and CEO, Scot Rourke, a whopping $302,010. The VP and chief financial officer, Mark Ansboury, made $282,959.

But he believes the Rourke regime “sold Akron a bill of goods.”

Rourke wouldn’t talk with me, either. Apparently, people at the heart of Connect Akron are extremely eager to distance themselves from the project. Little wonder.

@16

Those photos in that article are not what CenturyLink is proposing today, which is much reduced in size and scope. The problem is that media can only go out and snap photos of what's already in the ground, which is equipment from decades ago. Today's cabinets and equipment are much smaller.

As to your notion that the city should easily be able to deploy 1Gbps service using existing dark fiber, you have to realize that dark fiber is not to the node in many places, much less fiber to the home. In 2007, the City conducted a study which indicated it would cost in excess of $700M to build out a fiber network across Seattle. That's around, what, $1,100 for every man, woman and child in the city.

Plus, it isn't just about laying fiber in the ground. That's the easy part. It's about that last mile of how you get it into buildings and the rooms and units in those buildings. It's also about the cost of networking equipment including routers which must be maintained at specific temperatures and humidity levels - and draw a ton of power.

That's just the wholesale part of it, since under state law, you have can create a wholesale fiber network, but not operate the retail part of it. You've got to find a reasonable retail partner who has the experience and wherewithal to maintain and upgrade the expansion of the routers and equipment, negotiate installation and maintenance contracts with individual building owners that cover insurance and potential damage to the buildings - as well determine what rights there are on-site for marketing efforts and whether or not there are exclusionary agreements already in place (ie., door fees, exclusive marketing arrangements). That partner has got to create a massive marketing effort to publicize and sell the service to existing users from other providers - including going up against Comcast, which has a bajillion dollars and locked in service contracts with their customers, along with triple play capability. That retail partner also must have a massive customer service department capable of answering hundreds of complaints, service upgrade requests, and general questions about networking.

The point is: there are not a lot of players who can do this at the scale that would serve Seattle's 600,000+ residents. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but you have to understand that even with a $700M muni fiber build commitment, you are not out of the woods.

Oh yeah, and then you have the Seattle Process to contend with, which will delay your deployment schedule for another 10 years. I'm all for open democracy, but the reality is that opening this up to the will of the voters will not necessarily get you where you want to go.

I'm just curious why we only heard of GB's (obviously quite deep) issues when it was too late to do anything about them. There seemed to be plenty of warning signs (their constantly slipping rollout dates, the radio silence from their website, etc), yet Team McGinn was acting like we were just months away from the best thing ever.

Meh. We'll likely never know now. A SCL led situation works for me. Anything that ACTUALLY WORKS instead of just sounding nice.

For everyone who thinks Tacoma's Click! Network is so much better than Seattle's Internet access speeds, Tacoma actually has worse average speeds than Seattle. Tacoma averages 22.94Mbps vs. Seattle's 25.17Mbps, according the NetIndex.com.

While Seattle is ranked only #31 out of the top #50 WA cities, Tacoma ranks #41 out of the top #50. That shows you everything you need to know.

Now the counter-factual to that is Grant County PUD, which has a huge fiber network. But they spent over $100M on that about 10 years ago and serve about 6,000 residents today. You can figure out the ROI on that.

Just curious... odds on city voters approving an initiative to create a SCL for the internet? I'd sure as hell vote for that.

Anyone suggesting Centurylink increasing speeds will matter in any way is kidding themselves. 250GB cap, they don't want to change that, what's the point of being able to go 128 megabytes a second if you can only go that speed for 250GB before you have no more service? It's pointless. It's not a good product. It's a disgrace to the market.

Here is the 2009 study paid for by the city.
The executive study starts on page 5.
City Light can't make a business case, as of 2009, to get fiber to the premises (FTTP). It would have to be the City of Seattle the would have to build out the fiber.
The study notes that there isn't enough money in a private company to build out the finer, but there would be enough demand to sustain the network.
It appears the McGinn was attempting to activate the existing fiber where it existed, but the is not what the study said to do.

We could have had municipal fiber inter net city wide ready to go within the next could years had we followed the recommendation of the study.
http://www.seattle.gov/broadband/docs/Se…

I was very encouraged the McGinn supported this in 2009. And extremely discouraged that he took the path that he did. It was stupid, it would have been a decade before the edges of the city would have seen fiber serving. Now it may be a full decade, from the release of the study, that any measurable population will benefit.

@41, that was studied, too, again city of Seattle, not SCL alone. I can locate the report but, a majority of people would have supported it.

I think McGinn was preoccupied with getting another tax measure on the ballot. But, he didn't get light rail for Ballard to a vote within 2 years of him taking office.
No city wide fiber internet, no light rail to Ballard, lose-lose.

@36, While its not against state law for a city to wire itself for fiber, it is against state law for them to operate or provide TV/Internet service. McGinn was wrong in suggesting this could be an option when he cited SCL as an example. So yeah, he's wrong, totally wrong, but it didnt matter to him as he knew he was being voted out of office and used every hail mary option to get votes. Dangling $60 gigabit internet, as soon as Feb 2014, was enough to get undecided voters to switch their vote.

@45: "it is against state law for them to operate or provide TV/Internet service"

Yes, can you tell us which law?

I can find

Sales and Use Tax - Wash. Revenue Code § 82.14.370
Passed by the Washington State legislature in 1997, the legislation allows sales and use taxes to be collected by rural counties for the purpose of building and maintaining telecommunications infrastructure

and

Washington High-Speed Internet Work Group
Created by the state legislature in 2008, the working group – under direction of the state’s
Department of Information Services -- is charged with the development of a high-speed
deployment and adoption strategy. The legislation requires the working group to develop
a plan for broadband mapping; creation of local technology planning teams; identification
resources available to spur broadband deployment and adoption; and creation of programs to make available low-cost computers and enhance digital literacy. The legislation that established the work group also created a community technology opportunity program administered by the Washington State University extension. The high-speed working group must include representatives of local government, education, health care, economic development agencies, community-based organizations, telecommunications providers, and telecommunications unions.

But I can't seem to find specific prohibitions.

@45, 46, 47.
It's either against the law or can easily get a beaten in court. I can't remember which right now. What the city can do is creat / partner with a non-profit for the part that actually interfaces with the public as an ISP.
The duopoly of cable and telecom regularly win in court (but usually buy the votes for the laws to not compete).
In order to get complete coverage for all of the city, including the poorest of neighborhoods, a municipality has to put in its requirements that the entire city must be covered (that effort by private enterprise just failed); it has to demand Fiber To The Premises (FTTP). It must provide uniform rates so some neighborhoods to get screwed because of the location of their home or business.
The combination of all 3 is something that a commercial outfit can not commit to doing. Some parts may be something 1 carrier can attempt. McGinn went for that low hanging fruit and it failed to deliver where our fiber already existed, and it would have created a digital divide.

This was known in 2009. We've lost 4 years.
http://www.seattle.gov/broadband/docs/Se…

I studied this, got my Com BA from UW in 2009, my Focus was Technology and Society.
I had written 5 or 6 papers on this topic. There are a few examples of how to roll this out.
You could look up muni wifi in Brookline MA as an example. They had such shitty cell service that the were going to creat a city owned version, they ended up creating a pretty neat muni wifi.

It is my, now out of date, opinion that the city update the 2009 study and move forward with mini fiber.
We would need a non profit tasked with leading and facilitating. I know this sounds nuts, but, I would make this a Seattle Public Library project (they are the only information based governmental agency that has fought to protect your right to keep your personal information personal; they have and manage an information network; they already have brick and mortar offices throughout the city). If not them then invent a non profit like that to be a facilitator.
SCL would have to be a partner.

So, two major entities, 1 of them is a non profit tasked with delivering all three major city requirements, the other with a business need and the poles.

There're been a study on rolling something like this out, the costs, the likely rates, and how much capital it would take (taxes, you know, the money we use to buy things that the private sector is unable to provide).

@48: Right, well, obviously Comcast/CenturyLink are going to make the argument that it is, ambiguously according to their interpretation regardless, however Kinison is stating that it's against a specific law, explicitly and obviously, so I'm curious where it's called out in State law.

I think there is an anti-competitive clause in the city's contract with comcast. I don't know or remember if there is something in state law.
My memory isn't very good right now.

Is that a public document? Wouldn't surprise me if not.