It's magic! I'm posting a comment more than 12 hours before this story is published on Slog!

40 Gigs on campus up down .. And you believe Comcast can't do 1?

@3 municipal internet has nothing to do with gentrification and that's a crap scare tactic against forward progress of society, not dissimilar to the few particularly vocal 'anti-displacement' advocates in this town who only worry about displacement of parking spaces in tony neighborhoods like Portage Bay.

For poor residents who need internet access -- and no one absorb anyone's BS that everyone doesn't need the internet in this age of dying paper news and business shifting ever more online, none of which will stop -- having a municipal option that exists to exist and break even with decent to good service for far less than profit-taking companies is good. If municipal could roll out a decent, low-income option for $20 a month, for say municipal wifi or an inexpensive plan to the home? We could get ever more of the city's population from all income and social classes online, from the immigrants and refugees to the working poor to anyone else.

@4 Municipal broadband is precisely the opposite of gentrification--civic investment in the infrastructure of underserved neighborhoods--which would be a nice departure from the norm in the Fastest Growing City in the US

@5 - I would just like to say that I've been working with the city, as a volunteer on the Technology Advisory Board for the past 3 years on these issues, through 3 different CTOs and 2 mayors, and there has never been the kind of real progress on this issue as there is right now. As a general proponent of municipal broadband, I couldn't be happier with the work they are doing right now on this issue.

I've discovered that I get faster access using my damn phone as a hot spot with only 1 bar of 4gLTE service than I do with Comcast's supposed 25 MBps "service".

If I measure it with something like speedtest, comcast wins, but for accessing web sites, pages load instantly through the hot spot, while there's usually a delay with the Comcast connection.
So I'm switching. For Comcasts $60 a month I can buy a lot of gigs from the cell phone company. (It's tmobile btw)

Considering that the original plan was going to start with the richest neighborhoods first, the "gentrification" claim is hilarious!

You're just making this more difficult than it needs to be.



Change the Seattle Public Library Charter to extend its existing fiber network and information services to every premises.

We have a network already, it just hasn't been extended to every home.

We have a highly skilled information resource group that can answer an amazing amount of personal human assistance with branch offices called libraries.

They already charge fees directly from customers (late fees).

They already defend my right to information privacy (one of the few).

@7, Stephen Bradford, try changing your DNS settings from Comcast to OpenDNS.com 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 or Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and see if that helps. One of the worst things that last mile providers provide is a crappy DNS service that slows everything down.

@4 and @5 Precisely - modern functional internet is an essential requirement for participating in contemporary economic life and should not be taking $80 a month out of a budget and doesn't need to.



Futhermore, poor people have enough shit they have to beg for and prove they are deserving for. Other than the elderly or disabled, who should get FREE fucking internet, the rate should be fixed and I think really no one should be paying more than $20 a month.

fuck comcast

City Light could wire the City up with modern 1 GBs wifi with a unit on every block as a start for a tiny fraction of the cost of an all wired network just like Comcast's Canadian counterpart Shaw and the City of New York are doing.



Folks would just need a $20 wifi repeater to carry the signal through their dwelling unit



$20M and the job would be done in a year. Charge an annual access fee of a few bucks needs be to cover the capital/ongoing cost.



Lotsa of campaign donations going to City Council to make sure that doesn't happen.