Slashdot Mirror
Seattle To Get Gigabit Fiber To the Home and Business
symbolset writes "Enthusiasm about Google's Kansas City fiber project is overwhelming. But in the Emerald City, the government doesn't want to wait. They have been stringing fiber throughout the city for years, and today announced a deal with company Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to serve fiber to 55,000 Seattle homes and businesses with speeds up to a gigabit. The city will lease out the unused fiber, but will not have ownership in the provider nor a relationship with the end customers. The service rollout is planned to complete in 2014. It is the first of 6 planned university area network projects currently planned by Gigabit Squared."
I think it is awesome that they are trying to get fiber through out the city but 55,000 is a really really small number. From the math in the article it is going to cost them $3636.37 per residence/business they connect to the network. Any idea how that compares to google's plans in Kansas city cost wise?
This is perfect. All FTTH/FTTB should be tax supported "infrastructure" instead of run by thieving corporate scumbags. All fibers should terminate in a neighborhood or regional carrier-neutral "meet me" room where anyone with backbone (pun intended) could offer connectivity to any customer just by running a jumper or configuring a switch remotely. Then the customer is free to choose the flavor of thieving corporate scumbag he wants to deal with. Sign me up for a mix of Level 3 and Cogent please!
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
I hope this trend spreads so that the incumbent telcos are left only with the choice to either make good on their 200 billion dollar "promise" or go screw themselves.
As a former Seattlite, I applaud the city's efforts, and I wonder what this will mean with respect to cost for the end user and competition in the market:
" The city will lease out the unused fiber, but will not have ownership in the provider nor a relationship with the end customers"
Can there be multiple lessees along particular routes, or is the whole thing likely to be gobbled up by Comcast or FIOS?
Enthusiasm? But isn't that kind of public intervention an horrible communist-like threat to free market?
Oh, wait, ISP have not yet started their media campaign against the project
YES!!! I have been suffering under the Comcast/Century Link (aka Qwest) for 7 years. Minimal competition means that they only have to maximize profits.
I love this city: our utilities are clean and environmentally friendly because of a great administration. Although the public transit system isn't as nice as NYC, we are fixing that too.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Be prepared to pay double or triple what you should for this. This would be more efficiently handled by the private sector in a competitive environment. There is no reason tax dollars need to go to subsidize this when it has been proven time and time again that government involvement translates into higher prices, more screwups, and more debt for us all.
yeah, look how efficiently comcast, time warner, verizon et al are rolling out the gigabit fiber.
Too bad you don't know what you're talking about. Except for the two dozen or so buildings serviced by CondoInternet.net, that area of Seattle has the worst ISP services in the metro area. Very bizarre since so many startups are located around there. If the private sector was up to doing this, it would've already happened long ago.
i've been sitting in seattle, well, since forever... and this is at least the third try at this. comcast the evil monopoly that holds seattle in its death-grip will try everything that was successful at shutting this down and then-some before letting this through. they will start with "incentives" (building computer labs in the schools for example), then move to bribes (there's a hot mayor race coming up. watch if one candidate suddenly gets a zillion in outside funding. "but that's illegal!!" yeah... right), then legal threats like suing for restraint of trade (which have turned the trick before). they may also get federal, using a bribed federal regulatory agency to shut down the endeavor. so as much as i'd love to see this, and might even directly benefit, this ain't going to go down smoothly. this is a fairly fidgety "David" against an massively monetized Goliath.
First legal weed and now this!!! Damn Seattle is becoming a greater place to live!
you paid for the city government to lay dark fiber for years, then they are handing it off to a private company who will gouge you to flicker lights at the ends of it?
yes I know there is more to it than flickering lights, but I also know the ISP is not going to provide this service for operating cost + small percentage, they will run with it, charge as much as every other fiber service and you footed the bill for their infrastructure, that is "on lease" at a deep discount for might as well be life.
Maybe the fibre will be paid for by legalized and taxed weed.
What the internet is doing is showing people for who and what they really are.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars