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."

Comments

Color me unimpressed

[Dyinobal]

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?

Re:Color me unimpressed

[Nyder]

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?

Seeing as I live in one of those areas, and all i can get it either crappy DSL, evil Comcast Cable, or stupid wifi thingy, I'm pretty cool with this. At least till i see what it's going to cost me monthly. I'm signed up and debating on if i should get involved to get the word out to my neighborhood to sign up to show interest.

While this may not be enough for you, it's a start.

Re:Color me unimpressed

[Dyinobal]

Ya it is a start but I'm a bit dubious about the cost and such. Telecom companies are kinda notorious for taking funds that are supposed to be used to improve their networks and connect more customers and pretty much doing very little with it and giving the rest away as bonuses etc.

Re:Color me unimpressed

[Bengie]

Google is claiming about $1500/house, which lines up with estimated costs from many other fiber companies.

Re:Color me unimpressed

[timeOday]

I've had Comcast (previously, @home) broadband at my current address for a little over 10 years. Figure $60/mo, that's $7,200. Obviously there will be maintainence and upstream bandwidth costs, but the numbers don't seem so out of line to me, especially with borrowing money being so cheap right now.

Re:Color me unimpressed

[firex726]

Yep, we've been paying for these upgrades since Clinton but haven't seen a damn thing really.

The upgrades are always too expensive and they don't have the money, so WTF have them been doing with all those service fees for the past couple decade?

They need to be held accountable, give us the upgrades or give us the money.

Exactly as it should be

[soundguy]

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!

Re:Exactly as it should be

[organgtool]

I am fine with the scumbags building and maintaining the network. The problem I have is that our government pays money to the scumbags to build and maintain the network and then allows the scumbags to hold OWNERSHIP of the network. The creation of the network should be a work-for-hire job in which the government pays a company for the materials and the process of assembling those materials into a working network. At all times, those materials and the finished network should remain property of the people just like how we own all of the other parts of our infrastructure. Then our local governments can contract out the maintenance of the network equipment to the company that built the network or other competent companies. If the performance of the company serving the maintenance contract is not up to the satisfaction of the people they serve, then their local government can choose another company after the current contract expires. This system would save us from the current system of regulated monopolies that everyone rightfully hates.

Good

[epp_b]

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.

Not Comcastic!

[fsterman]

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.

Re:Private sector would be more efficient.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Private sector would be more efficient.

[Tumbleweed]

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.

Give us MORE!!!!

[Dutchmaan]

First legal weed and now this!!! Damn Seattle is becoming a greater place to live!