[Editor's Note: Following up on his interview with Bill Schrier, Seattle's tech czar, yesterday (which got into the idea of citywide broadband), TechNerd Glenn Fleishman looks at how the ugly virus of 20th-Century redlining is infecting the 21st.]
The legacy of Seattle redlining and property covenants has come home to roost in the 21st century in the form of bad access to broadband.
While it also true in other communities that poor neighborhoods and those historically dominated by racial and ethnic minorities have worse Internet service, in most of those cities both rich and poor, white and black have pockets or neighborhoods of crummy wire and providers. You can be quite rich in Philadelphia and still not be able to get a 21st-century broadband wire, for instance.”
Not so in Seattle. Sure, we can all cite examples of areas around the city with poor service, but nothing is as bad as what is found generally across Beacon Hill and the Central District, which has a separate cable that’s kept those neighborhoods far behind their peers. The deregulated nature of broadband—only the FCC can intervene, not local or state government—means that only changes at a federal level can force improvements.
Cable TV providers are licensed by franchise boards, of which thousands exist nationwide. The franchise boards provide access to public rights of way typically in exchange for a quasi-tax, like 5 percent of revenue, and specific givebacks, like a cable company funding public access TV and providing channels of public information and government hearing broadcasts.
But three branches of federal government–congress, courts, and the FCC–have said that broadband can’t be considered as part of the cable TV franchise. It’s an information service. Likewise, public telecom commissions that govern the universal and fair availability of a dial tone from registered telephone companies like Qwest also cannot consider broadband as part of the package. The FCC is the only agency that has the right to deal with this.
How does this tie in with the C.D. and beyond? Comcast has most of the cable franchise in Seattle–with the exception of the C.D. and Beacon Hill. Broadstripe, a firm currently in bankruptcy, is the 3rd or 4th or maybe 5th successive holder of the C.D.–the “Central Cable Television Franchise District.”
It extends very roughly from I5 in the West to 31st in the east and Madison or Spring in a wide swath. From 90, another district juts in, and service south of 90 runs in a triangle from 90 at the north, Rainier at the west to south, and 31st on the east. On the east side of I5, the district runs from I90 south bounded by 16th AveS until it hits Beacon Ave S all the way down south of Othello to Benefit St. (There’s a map you can download from the city’s franchise site.)
Reports indicate that Broadstripe’s service is atrocious. Where Comcast pulled fiber into neighborhoods long ago, and is in the middle of its DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade (a new standard for vastly faster broadband) and its digital transition (no more analog signals over cable to increase channels for broadband use), it’s unclear where Broadstripe stands. Nationally, it’s working in improving speeds, but poor infrastructure means that you can’t simply push more bits over. Potentially tens of millions of dollars need to be spent in all aspects of the system to meet Comcast performance in the rest of the city.
Qwest is no better. DSL works by running data over regular phone lines, and suffer from distance from central offices and old wiring that’s poorly insulated or degraded over time. Beacon Hill residents report poor Qwest speeds, likely due to both factors.
I’m not accusing any company today (or in the last couple of decades) of active neglect. Rather, it’s all about decisions made decades ago about where to spend money to put wire in the ground, and who to serve that has led directly to this situation today.
As noted in my interview with Seattle’s chief technology officer, Beacon Hill is dead square on the city’s radar as a potential testbed for building a fiber-optic to the home network, one that would catapult the have-nots into Japanese levels of Internet and TV connectivity.
I’m looking for insight from the neighborhood. Do you live in Beacon Hill, the C.D., or surrounding areas and have been frustrating with broadband? Comment below. Tell us what you have, what you get, and what you’ve tried to do. Are you planning to move because of this, because you can’t work at all from home or stay up on office issues? Does it affect your business? Let us know.
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I live in Beacon Hill, just behind the Amazon building. Qwest only offers 256k dsl (!?!) so I’m stuck with Broadstripe. They’ve completely oversold to the area, so their infrastructure is saturated by mid-afternoon, and I’m *lucky* to get 1mbps down, where I’m promised a steady 6mbps downstream. Most of the time, though, I can’t even buffer a YouTube video. I often work remotely, and I’m routinely unable to even use my VOIP phone. I’m desperately clinging to the hope that Qwest will lay fiber (they’ve hinted at it), or that Amazon will sell its extra bandwith to the immediate neighborhood.
When cable service first came to the CD in the early 90s, Mayor Rice insisted that only a black-owned franchise could service the neighborhood. I’ve long since forgotten the name of the provider, but they were the pits and soon filed for bankruptcy.
Then we got another provider, same story. When I finally got Internet service I did so through Qwest and AOL. I left AOL for nwlink, and we did get Comcast cable, but for some reason never got high speed Internet with them…check with the City re: why they insisted that the cable service be black-owned. Even though I’m black, I didn’t care who provided the service as long as there was adequate service.
@2: I’ll look into that. I don’t believe it’s possible to insist on a specific racial ownership in a city contract, although businesses that a majority participation by minorities or women often get additional points in scoring bids on contract jobs. Franchise board hearings should be archived.
We live a couple of blocks from the light rail station on Beacon Hill. Back around 1999-2001, we had Qwest DSL. At the time, they offered a 640Kbps-down 544Kbps-up service that we subscribed to. While never quite able to get the DSL modem to stick at 640K down (it usually topped out at 512K), it was fine for a year and a half.
Then it started to suck. At certain times of day, or in certain weather, it’d be down for 5-20 minutes at a time.
Qwest came out and checked the line several times, removing dead taps off the line, switching us from pair to pair at the cabinet in the alley or on the pole. The inside wiring, for which I had their maintenance plan at the time, always tested fine. Generally, this would improve things… for a while.
Eventually, they said there was nothing else they could do and that we actually didn’t qualify for DSL service! This was rather surprising since we’d been approved just fine for service 18 months prior. After
much wrangling, they said the best they could do is drop us to 256K/256K service and see if that would work.
256K/256K service worked generally OK… for a few months. Then it was back to constant drops, particularly in hot or wet weather.
Throughout this process, I tried to switch to Covad for DSL. Twice. Both times, after spending more than a day trying to get it to work, they gave up.
So, finally, I gave in and switched to cable. We live just a block and a half outside Comcast territory and thus, by government-granted monopoly, our only choice is Broadstripe (formerly Millennium Digital
Media). Their service has been thoroughly mediocre. Speeds were ok at the start and uptime was, well, fair. I got bumped offline usually once or twice a day, but it was back up and going within a minute or two 90% of the time.
More recently, evening download speeds have been reliably below 1Mbps. I’ve posted some raw data and graphs showing the incredibly slow evening speeds that gradually increase after midnight, peaking between 4 and 6am, then falling off gradually until it nosedives around 6pm. The throughput issues are correlated closely to packet loss which follows the same pattern.
I’ve sent a detailed analysis of this to Broadstripe, and since then they’ve re-capped my downstream bandwidth to the old 6Mbps limit, and I’ve seen a technician with a lift truck checking distribution boxes on utility poles in the neighborhood, but throughput levels have not noticeably improved.
The throughput graphs I mentioned (and posted previously) are at http://bit.ly/iSloj
I’m on North Beacon Hill. Started with Covad DSL and got fed up when they sold out and my network broke and couldnt get it functional; Covad blamed router, router said it was ISP, techs on both ends couldn’t get it going. Bought new router, though I truly believed my router was fine.
Went to Clearwire. Cheap and portable. But spotty in my area, just above the jungle. Could not work from home with any reliability, unreasonable to be told to repeatedly cycle the modem.
Fear of Millenicom/Broadstripe, jumped to Qwest DSL. Better than Clearwire, but working from home can still be a problem. At it’s worst, I’ve had to reconnect my VPN 8 times in one day. At it’s best, I’ve held a VPN connection for 8 days. When you are 7×24 computing support for a large company, having your VPN drop could be lethal to one’s employment. Sad when you have to use dial up as a back up plan.
Give us speed and tability, please!
I recently moved to a house west of Beacon Ave on Orcas. After reading about the horror stories people were having with Broadstripe, I decided to go with Qwest. While their service was pretty good, the speeds are nowhere near what they promise. My supposed 7mbps connection rarely gets up to 1.5mbps peak, but the big problem is its so inconsistent, often slowing to a trickle in the evening. Streaming is pretty much impossible, and working from home is much more difficult without a quality VPN connection to the office. Seattle should be embarrassed by this situation considering how important technology is to the area.
It’s a big step back from the Comcast connection I had in N Seattle, though I don’t miss their prices and customer service.
I’m trying not to get my hopes up over the proposed new broadband fiber network, but I would sign up in a heartbeat if it were available.
I also live on Beacon Hill, just south of the light rail station.
We can’t get DSL — Qwest says we are too far from their office for it to work. So our only choice is broadstripe, which is truly truly awful. I’ve used Comcast and a variety of DSL providers through Qwest at other addresses, and this by far the worst there is.
Third world does not begin to some up how bad the problem is. It’s about time the city stepped in laid fiber.
I live around the VA hospital and have/have to use Broadstripe. I definitely notice our internet has been unusually slow lately. Over the past year it was always spotty especially with the weather, but now it’s just slow all the time or cuts out completely.
I am a full time grad student and sometimes I end up in a panic when I am not able to complete online assignments that are due the next day. Other times, I have to call my mom or a friend to help me submit assignments/do other school related things while they are at work at the last minute because my internet is down. I can’t reliably watch my online streaming lectures either.
I hadn’t tried to do anything about it before because I didn’t realize what the situation was and have just tried to live with it. Thanks for your article.
I live across the street from Beacon Hill International School. Qwest and Covad both said I live way too far away from the CO to qualify for DSL. I could of course pay a lot of money and get something like a T1 line but that would require cooperation with 5 of my neighbors to make it cost effective. Broadstripe speeds are pretty horrible, tanking to below 1Mbps at peak times (weekends and evenings). If I call Broadstripe and ask them what I should be getting, they’ll ask me to run a speed test. I’ll explain that I’ve been running tests which is what prompted my calls. “Just run it again and we’ll see what it says.” Like magic it’ll result in a suitable result. This will last for a few days and then return to its normal poor quality. I’ve asked the tech on the phone if he tweaked any settings and of course the answer is a no but I can almost hear him winking.
I understand that some companies are better than others and Broadstripe is struggling. What frustrates me to no end is that I am given no other choice.
I lived in the CD from 2000 through 2002 the first year I was there I made the mistake of signing up for broadband service with Mellenium. It was a year of constant outages and slowdowns with no real explanation or concern from Mellenium. I finally threw in the towel and went with Speakeasy DSL, fortunately I was close enough to the CO to get decent speeds. I’ve had them ever since including during another 2 year stint in Mellenium territory in 2005-2007.
While I now live in Maple Leaf and have a number of choices for broadband service I would love to have access to something with the capablities of Verizon’s FOIS.
I moved to Beacon Hill from north Seattle and one of the first things I noticed when I moved to the neighborhood was the amount of satellite TV dishes on all of the houses. I soon discovered that the reason that satellite TV was so popular was because the only choice for cable in the area was Broadstripe and Broadstripe has proven to be TERRIBLE!
As a small business owner that is dependent on the internet to communicate and do business it has been a real bummer to work around all of the problems with Broadstripe. I find myself frequently heading downtown or to the library just to get internet access.
I never even thought about internet access when I lived in other parts of the city, it was just another utility like water or electricity that I didn’t have to worry about. Now I’m not even sure if this comment will post when I push the ‘Submit Comment’ button at the bottom of the page.
I have recently moved to Seattle, been accepted into specific housing for ” Artists and Their Families ” at the nearly brand new Hiawatha Artist Lofts, an outstanding example of what healthy relationships can produce ( oh don’t we need much more of this today! ). Anyway my art requires uploading detailed images, for example photo’s of paintings from say the Metropolitian Museum of Art in NYC, and well this requires certain capabilities or sumitting large files for review, or clients. E-mailing is what we’d consider a normal 21st Century business need too, right? My G-Mail has what would be called siezures in other professions. Well I’ve been securing my own Portrait Commissions since 1992 and I’ve never had worse internet service, almost…but I can tell you most definately my old Earthlink dial-up through Verizon was just about as fast as what I have here in the Hiawatha Artist Lofts and now I know more clearly where to begin pointing fingers when it comes to business concerns and the basics for 21st century information exchanges. The Hiawatha Artist Lofts is an especially important asset, no a down right GIFT clear out of the big, yes , BLUE SKY, giving a ” Leg Up ” to Real and Working Artists ( not dead yet and certainly not waiting to be famous because someone discovered their works long after they lived either ). Everything about Hiawatha is central to making it ( The Arts ) possible and inseperably the best functioning information access is essential, absolutely so. You see it’s history all over again, if it were not for the technology of printing ( text/books and later inmages )information would not have been available and all the growth since non existant. And yet here I am fresh from Haleiwa Hawaii, the famed North Shore, center of the universe for surfing where I had much much better internet service than I do right smack dab in the middle of Microsoft Land and Big Boy Billy and the Private Sector can’t ” get er dun ” ? Go figure…I thought I returned to the Mainland dude, happy Surfing
Wow. I realize now that I didn’t even ask about internet access when I rented this house several years ago – and I (realize now) was lucky enough to be in the narrow Comcast band on 16th and Hill. I have been unhappy with the price I am paying, but I certainly can’t complain about the speed as it is pretty decent almost all the time. That said, I love the idea of being in a test area for a fiber-optic network and I, too, would sign up immediately.
A friend living up on 15th closer to Amazon, uses Clearwire and is very happy with both the speeds and reliability. According to him, he has never lost connectivitity that didn’t come back almost immediately (apparently usually just moving the modem a little often does the trick.)
I live near Beacon & Spokane and have Broadstripe. I’ve only lived here for 9 months or so, but am constantly frustrated by the internet service. My internet frequently cuts out while I’m using it and I have to unplug my modem and wait several minutes to reconnect to have it work again. Usually it just requires a re-connect but I’ve had it go out on night or weekends for extended period of times. The best part about Broadstripe is that it’s nearly impossible to get anyone on the phone after business hours to inform them of outages.
As a recently graduated student, I found the spotty internet a constant frustration in attempting to do my homework and research from my home. Some nights I would return to the school just to be able to research without my connection going down and forcing to restart in databases that log you out after inactivity.
Uploading photos is also a pain since it can take forever and with the spotty service sometimes you have to re-start uploads multiple times.
i live in the CD, but get Comcast be luck of being on the north side of the block. if i lived on the other side of the street, i’d be broadstriping it.
let’s just say this is a prime example of government trying to engineer something and not having a FUCK clue how to do it. every neighbor in the CD hates broadstripe. If this was Ballard and they were being experimented on, it would have gone away.
i’m for competition, but government fucking driving it in such a hamfisted way is comical
I live in the CD. I get my TV via DirectTV and love, love, love the service. No problems with losing signals/connectivity, way lower price than cable and better quality. Their customer service is terrific.
I get my internet (DSL) through Earthlink, though their customer service leaves something to be desired, I don’t have to contact it often. The service is quick and reliable.
I live on the borders of the CD, near the international district. To be precise, I am an artist in the Hiawatha live-work spaces. I shouldn’t complain because Broadstripe is giving us free IS for five years! Or so I’m told.
That is very, very good.
But…but…the video streaming is so bad as to be useless. It’s just about as bad as 55k dial up. I feel guilty and ungrateful complaining, yet I feel if they promise us DSL, even for free, that’s what we should get of a promise.
I live near Spokane and Columbian and Broadstripe actually seems to work fairly well. There’s an occasional outage but has always been under an hour except for maybe twice that I can remember since moving here. Speeds are generally decent and I’ve had very few occasions to call to complain.
Comcast was a problem in the past, but it was a different city a few years ago and I’ve heard nothing but horror stories from friends and family with Clearwire, but again – different cities. I guess I’ll just count my blessings that Broadstripe actually works for me.
One alternative for people if they do less than 5GB per month is to go with one of the wireless carrier’s mobile data options. It isn’t cheap at about $60 a month but at least you can take it anywhere on your carrier’s network.
I live in mid Beacon Hill and currently have the atrocious Broadstripe service you mentioned. After moving to Beacon Hill, I will never complain about Comcast again. For 9 months, our internet dropped an average of 20-30 times per day. I sometimes work from home, and this is unacceptable. Not to mention my husband throwing his PS3 controller across the room every time it dropped. It got to the point where we had our own cable guy and called his cell directly when we needed help. The company finally got sick of us and put in a dedicated line for our internet, so it has improved, but is still not up to par. Youtube videos, for example, take several minutes to load. It is very frustrating.
I live in the CD and hate Broadstripe with a firey passion. I had just assumed that all cable sucked in the city, but apparently not… Thanks for the reporting.
My service is so bad I’m relieved when it actually works. When it does, it’s often very slow.
I live in the Central District (Yesler Way) and absolutely am frustrated with Broadstripe! I suppose this article is more about internet broadband, which I do NOT have through Broadstripe since I don’t want to give them more of my money, but do have Broadstripe for digital cable.
Lately the cable TV service has been getting considerably worse with some channels just disappearing completely (black screen) in the middle of shows for minutes at a time at least. On Wednesday evening (9/30/09) the audio on Channel 4 (KOMO) was from something completely different than the show that was on (it sounded like a microphone sitting next to a busy traffic road).
I also am very frustrated with Broadstripe’s online bill paying and just sent them a nasty email this morning. I have been trying for weeks to pay my cable bill online since I went completely paperless from them some time ago (you know, that green idea…). Well their site has been unavailable to pay my bill everytime I try until today. But now they have completely changed their online billing and I apparently have to re-set everything up. Problem is I have to know my account number to do so, but can’t log in to get it (since I am paperless). I know this isn’t about the broadband itself, but it does speak to their TERRIBLE service. I am likely late on my bill now because of this and no wonder they are in bankruptcy when I (and probably others) can’t even get in to pay the bills that we “owe” them.
I live near 24th and Cherry in the CD. We cannot have satellite dishes on our condo building and Comcast does not serve our block, so we’ve had Broadstripe for around two years. Download speeds during peak hours hover around 2 mbps. I’ve had several technicians come out to the building, check my equipment and tell me that it’s a problem on their end and they’ll work on it. The customer service representatives often tell me there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be getting 15 mbps download speeds. For the last couple of weeks they’ve had known issues with the Seattle “backbone” and are supposedly “working on it”.
A good resource for information about Broadband service is http://www.dslreports.com. You can search for customer reviews by provider, type of service and Zip Code.
Hey, @24: it’s against federal law for a condo organization to ban satellite dishes. The FCC and courts have made this very clear. Please email me privately if you want more information.
From the FCC’s fact sheet on this matter:
“The rule (47 C.F.R. Section 1.4000) has been in effect since October 1996, and it prohibits restrictions that impair the installation, maintenance or use of antennas used to receive video programming. The rule applies to video antennas including direct-to-home satellite dishes that are less than one meter (39.37″) in diameter (or of any size in Alaska), TV antennas, and wireless cable antennas. The rule prohibits most restrictions that: (1) unreasonably delay or prevent installation, maintenance or use; (2) unreasonably increase the cost of installation, maintenance or use; or (3) preclude reception of an acceptable quality signal.”
I live around 17th and Union and I switched from Broadstripe to Qwest a few months ago. The difference has been absolutely great. I regularly run at around 5-7Mb download speed and with Fraudstripe, I seldom popped over the 1Mb rate. It has enabled me to dump cable completely and rely on hulu and netflix streams. I love it! VPN is also great and I run large 3D modeling programs over the wire.
If you’re in that neighborhood, I reccommend the switch. It must be close to a hub.
So you can only get Broadstripe (comcast made me wait a week before telling me they don’t service the CD), and it sucks. The internet freezes and drops connections all the time. Never for long, but just long enough to kill your downloads, your instant netflix, your outgoing email, etc. The technician pointed out that the wiring was the worst he has ever seen with a whole block running off a single cable, but Broadstripe refuses to make improvements. Broadstripe actually said: we have a really hard time providing service to seattle.
Ok, so fix it already!
@27
There is a Qwest Central Office at 17th & Pine. You’re maybe 500 ft away.
@28
If you are in the CD try DSL from Qwest, Speakeasy or whomever. Most likely you’ll get better speeds, a more reliable connection, and better customer service than Broadstripe.
Unfortunately the poor souls on Beacon Hill don’t really have that option either.
@28: Except for perhaps consumer fraud laws (and even then I’m not sure), the only way to complain about the broadband side appears to be by filing a complaint with the FCC.
You can file a complaint online.
@29, I am in the Mt. Baker neighborhood and we have Qwest but not all Qwest service is equal and although we are willing to pay for higher speed access, it is not available in our neighborhood. Qwest has no motivation to provide higher speeds because it has no competition – at least in this part of the city.
I live on 30th and Yesler in the CD. We have had an ongoing battle with Broadsrtipe for several years. I HATE HATE HATE them. But, I need the internet speed for my home based business. After several years of battling with Broadstripe, including calling the city directly to complain, and complaining ot the better business burueau, we were able to get a stronger signal by BRIBING the cable guy that came to our house to check on the repair. The cable repair guy could tell we were frustrated and then told us that what we needed was an amplifier on our signal. He said the COMCAST puts these in standard, but for some reason BROADSTRIPE has a policy against them. We greased his palms and he installed the amplifier. Since then our signal has been tolerable, but still not as good as the COMCAST I has in Portland.
Hi Glenn! Thanks for asking for input.
We live about 3 blocks from the Beacon Hill station. In 2003, we had Qwest and managed to somehow finagle 256K DSL (though it took some sweet talking of the bored tech to get him to spend over 7hrs connecting it). It was slower than work, but reliable and a reasonable price.
We moved out for some remodeling in 2007 and got Clearwire for our apartment near PacMed. It worked okay–could stream Netflix & upload flickr photos with only a few hiccups. Again, the price was okay.
We moved back to our house in the spring of 2008 & the phone line had been partially scraped off. We couldn’t get Qwest to install DSL again.
Clearwire didn’t work AT ALL at the house. I could check email but couldn’t load Slog or anything with photos–much less upload. When two of us were online it would time out every 5-10 minutes. Customer service wasn’t bad, but wasn’t helpful. When it rained we had no internet.
We had heard Comcast horror stories, but sucked it up and ordered cable. It’s more expensive, but much faster and much more reliable than any other options. Service has been okay–thankfully it hasn’t been necessary to call them. It’s still not as fast and costs more than options in other neighborhoods.
Is there a difference in internet service at schools in different neighborhoods? Is there any correlation between internet service and student performance (in school and/or email homework)? Are different businesses attracted to neighborhoods lacking fast, reliable, affordable broadband?
This is a topic worthy of exploration. Thanks again for digging into it!
@33: the schools are all getting hooked up to the city’s fiber network, which now comprises about 400 miles worth of optical cabling. Pretty cool.
I don’t believe any study’s been done to look at the Internet scholarship relationship, nor Internet business climate. There’s a lot of anecdotal stuff, though, and a general recognition that kids need to be Internet savvy to get any job that’s not purely manual labor; and there are increasingly fewer jobs that are just manual labor.
I live on 23rd and Fir and have been incredibly frustrated with the poor service we get from Broadstripe. I have both television cable and internet.
Television/Cable:
It is not a comparable product to Comcast–it lacks on demand choices, it lacks channels…and the service is horrid. I constantly lose the picture for a few seconds (it goes black) or the audio is lost for a minute. It’s bad.
But even worse is the INTERNET service!
For about a a year and a half, we lost internet connections about 3-10 times daily. It would just lose connectivity. Sometimes it would come back itself, most of the time I had to reboot the modem to get it back. If I couldn’t get it back, I would call Broadstripe and they would have to reset it. Customer service was ridiculous–to report the problem I had to speak with 2 different people which turned into a 10-20 minute call – sometimes longer if there was a wait. They told me I should call every time I lose connectivity, but I don’t have enough time in the day to do that. I finally yelled at them enough that they sent someone out to my house to repair it.
I do work from home about 1 time a week, but had to stop doing that because I kept losing internet service and got frustrated re-connecting to my work network 10 or more times a day.
When the repair guy came out, he said that Broadstripe has LOTS of problems with Seattle service., THey are trying to upgrade, but are not fully upgraded and they have really messed up service to seattle. He also said that whoever came and set up my cable for my house (it was a broadstripe cable guy) was an idiot because the cable connector prongs are too long and can cause problems, they should have shortened them. He did that-spent about an hour and a half to two hours in my house tweaking things. When he was done he told me–Hopefully the changes I made will help you not lose internet service as often, but your download speed may be slower now.
THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE for the amount of money I am paying!
Netflix and Youtube videos–any video in my house takes forever to buffer or constantly pauses during play because the speeds of broadstripe are unacceptable. So now my internet service doesn’t drop ALL the time (just some of the time) but I lost download speed and cannot watch videos or anything graphics heavy. I pay for both services and should get both services. But I am so beaten down over the last 3 years that I feel lucky to have what I have! That is sad.
I have had Dish network before and they are horrible, so I refuse to go to that. I simply want comcast–yes, even with all the complaints I have heard about them, their service and offerings are far better than broadstripe will ever be. I have filed a complaint with the FCC, but am unsure who to contact in the city.
Please help us rid this city of Broadstripe!
I love on Beacon Hill near 23rd and McClellan. Qwest could only provide 256K to our home so we had to go with Clearwire which only gives 1.5M on a very good and very clear day. Clearwire services is very spotty and our connection drops several times a day which makes it difficult to work from home. Because we have Direct TV and not Comcast cable broadband is not really an option due to the cost of not being a Comcast cable customer.
We would love to be customers of Qwest for broadband but they have no plans to lay cable to our area. It’s ridiculous that we cannot get adequate broadband in our area.
I live a few blocks west of the beacon hill light rail station. Since I’m west of beacon ave I’m forced to use broadstripe for broadband (if you can call it that). Their extreme internet advertised “up to 16Mbps” though I have never seen above 6Mbps, and my general speed is more like 2Mbps.
We haven’t had any reliability issues, but the speed is so variant. I have also seen throttling in the evenings down to ~1Mbps. Netflix, hulu, youtube. These are web services that I long to use but cannot.
Having recently moved back to Seattle from Tokyo, the contrast is stark. Tokyo is a fiber city and I feel like I was spoiled not to have to wait for a reasonably small web page to load. Coming back to Seattle I feel like I’ve gone back in time to the 1990s.
It is not about cost for me(within reason). I would absolutely LOVE to be able to pay Comcast prices for Comcast reliability at this point.
A city run/subsidized fiber infrastructure is also something that I would support and will be looking for this topic in the future when voting for city offices.
A city run cable system would be excellent, but it would never pass. Ironically, the antis will use City Light as an example, even though CL is cheaper and more reliable than PSE. It just that people are so poisoned by the stupid thought that “government can’t do anything” that we miss out on the many things government could do.
@38: Nice part about using revenue bonds is that there’s nothing to pass. The city wouldn’t be using taxpayer dollars, and thus would simply need the council and mayor to agree on terms, authorize bonds.
OK–I have already posted, but just had a new experience today that I feel the need to share. My cable TV went out last night. It’s happened before and I had to call broadstripe and they had to do something to re-recognize my cable card. No explanation for why it lost the cable card connection…but anyway.
I called first thing this morning (sunday) only to be passed on to their answering service because Broadstripe doesn’t work on Sunday! So–unless it’s a city wide outage (which I am pretty sure this is not), I won’t hear from them until Monday. I have NEVER had a cable company that wasn’t available 24×7. Although the operator at the Broadstripe answering service swore to me that no other cable companies work on sunday either-and then proceeded to hang up on me!
I hold broadstripe accountable for the answering service–horrible customer service. I can’t stand this anymore! I am calling Qwest–from what I can tell I may live close enough to get decent service!
@38
City Light is mostly well liked and well respected by it’s customers. I don’t think in all my years in this I’ve ever heard anyone say they wish they were served by PSE instead.
The same can’t be said for the broadband providers.
Also remember this is Seattle where the anti-government stupid hasn’t soaked in nearly as heavily as it has in Vader or Euphrata. We actually LIKE having government “do stuff”.
I am on 1st and University and like everyone else, do not have an option of getting Comcast.
Not knowing that so many of you were suffering from Broadstripe was slightly comforting…as I could try to be naive in believing the tech support telling me that things should be fixed soon. I felt that maybe it is just something in my area and things will improve. But now that I have read this and DSL reports, I do not have hope.
I used to be in Belltown for 3 years and had Comcast. I can remember only 2-3 outages in that time. I never had to think about running speed tests, as the speed was always good enough. I moved from Belltown to Downtown earlier this year to an apartment building that had service ‘just like comcast’. But to maintain continuity I wanted to get Comcast. When I called them, they actually asked me to call Broadstripe as they did not service this area. But 3-4 months back I tried my luck with Comcast again, and found that they had started offering services in this area, only to be told by my apartment office that they have an ‘exclusive contract’ with Broadstripe.
I run speed tests almost every evening on speedtest.net and track history. My avg speed for the last 20 tests is never more than 2mbps. In most cases it is less than 1mbps.
A few weeks back I was told that Broadstripe had scheduled a repair in the area to upgrade us to 15mbps. When the speed did not change after that day, I was told that they hit some snag and needed ‘additional equipment’ and that they were going to fix the issue ASAP, but no ETA. And in the past week I have seen something very peculiar. The IP address that I get is from a server in Maryland. Makes me wonder if the Seattle area infrastructure is really screwed up.
I have never felt more cheated in my life. Sure the claim is ‘up to 15 mbps’ and can be anywhere between 0-15. But then I don’t know how a company can be allowed to do this to so many customers and still get away with it.
I am actually contemplating breaking my apartment lease and moving to a place that has Comcast.
Can an apartment building force us to take the cable/internet service of their choice?
Can a company underdeliver to so many citizens and not face any penalty?
What can we do? Will going to the Office of Cable communications help? Will complaining to BBB help?
I moved to Beacon Hill about a year ago. For many years north of the ship canal I enjoyed great internet service – through my work and home. Now on the Hill I spend HOURS chatting with Broadstripe – my internet, phone and cable provider. One of only two horrible internet options here.
The last time I called from my work phone – they asked why I had waited so long to complain about the service. I reminded them – I HAVE HAD NO PHONE. They said “That’s dangerous.” No kidding.
The customer service people are very nice, but man, their product sucks. I work from home a lot – well I should say I try. I end up having to go into the office, because I just don’t have dependable service.
I hope we can be a city that offers the same, high-quality service to ALL of its citizens. Thank you for letting me vent.
I live on 14th and South Hinds, and am stuck with Broadstripe. We couldn’t even get Qwest DSL if we wanted to — the only broadband ISP available to us is Broadstripe.
The service is constantly bad, and at time unusable. I actually drive to work with my laptop on weekends when I need to download files of any considerable size.
We moved to BH from Ballard, where we had Speakeasy DSL (which was excellent), and were totally amazed at the poor level of connectivity available to us via Broadstripe in our new home.
I’m in the CD on 22nd and James. We use Qwest DSL. It’s slower than our old broadband, but mostly reliable, at least. We still get mysterious disconnections, but infrequently enough that it is strange. I just wish we could get broadband speed.
I guess it’s nice that beacon hill might get fiber, but I suspect I’ll have to move before I get anything better. I had a friend with the clearview service, the whole wireless internet thing, but its service has apparently gone from bad to worse as well.
I live behind Amazon HQ on Beacon Hill. After hearing horrible things about Broadstripe (seriously, google the name — I have never seen anything good mentioned about them) I tried to find alternatives. I can only get 256KB DSL from Qwest in my location, which I find ridiculous, and eventually settled on Clearwire because I figured slower, reliable speed was better than faster, unreliable speed. I’ve been happy with Clearwire by and large, excepting the fact that I pay the same price now for 1.5MB DSL as I did for 15MB cable that I did in the north end (and also excepting the fact that 1.5MB is kind of like a joke, and happens only once in a blue moon).
But again, I’ve never had a loss of service, which is more than I can say for many people on the Beacon Hill mailing list and blogs who use Broadstripe. It’s frustrating, by and large — and as someone who fortunately is mobile enough to be able to move frequently, my roommate and I are moving out of the area into one that is serviced by Comcast — or really, anyone but Broadstripe — once our lease is up; it really is one of the driving forces behind our move. As 23-year-olds, our having such stupendously bad choices for internet is… basically unacceptable, and something we’re willing to move away from.
@46: Katy, Clearwire is just about to finish an upgrade on its Seattle network, boosting speeds to 4 to 6 Mbps downstream with peak bursts of 10 to 15 Mbps. This is the WiMax service the firm’s rolled out elsewhere. It’s promised for this year in Seattle, though you’ll need new equipment to access the faster network. Pricing is comparable to its slower service now.
I live in Leschi at 29th and King Street. I am the blockwatch captain for about 100 households. I became fed up with Broadstripe’s low level of service myself and hearing the complaints from my neighbors. I organized a neighborhood meeting with a Broadstripe representative who promised all kinds of improvements. We are scheduling a follow-up meeting if there is enough interest. I have documents we put together for that meeting that details peoples’ complaints. Let me know if you would like to get copies. Cell phone 206-227-2369
I work inside El Centro de la Raza on the top floor and have used Clearwire for about 3 years. Just did a speed test and it was 240k/640k….which seems to be good enough for basic websurfing, etc. but of course pitiful when compared to what technology is available.
Thank you for looking into the issue of universal access to high speed internet. There is a group working on this called Speed matters.org
http://www.speedmatters.org/
Thanks for doing an article on this. I live a couple blocks north of the Beacon Hill station on 14th. I’ve used Clearwire for about a year now and it’s been reliable and running ~1Mb most of the time.
I can work from home but it’s slow – VPN is slow but fortunately I can access most services that I need without going that route. The one thing that I really need is to be able to use Skype. I manage a remote team and it would be great to be able to do video conferencing, but all I can get at that speed is voice.
I refuse to deal with Broadstripe because of all the issues that my neighbors have had to deal with. I’ve called Qwest and all I can get through them is 256K for about the same price as I pay for Clearwire. I was going to try satellite for internet connectivity, but you can’t do VPN connections via satellite so that’s a non-starter.
I’ve kept my land line because I just don’t trust a phone connection to a borderline internet connection and I don’t want to use up any of my limited bandwith since I often need to talk on the phone and be online at the same time.
I really hope that the city acts on bringing fiber-optic to Beacon Hill. I moved to BH many years ago and moving for a better internet connection is not an option as it would be if I was younger and renting. We’ve invested a lot in a complete rehab of an older home. We’ve brought a 1903 Victorian up to 21st century standards in terms of insulation, heating, plumbing, electrical, and even completely wired it with fiber in the belief that it would eventually get built out.
Frankly, WTF?!? We live about two mile from downtown Seattle, but my chances of getting that kind of connectivity would probably be better if I lived in rural Turkey, Spain or the Outback in Australia. The governments of these countries are actually trying to do something to increase internet speed and access. If we don’t start doing so as well, we’ll get surpassed by them as well – we already are by most of the first world. If I have to move for better internet it will be not just to another part of Seattle, but out of the country.
I have lived 32 yrs on Beacon HIll; am 2 blocks south
of McClellan on 22nd Ave. I am able to get my cable with Comcast for some 20 yrs now. My service is good.
Today I signed up for a promo with Comcast for internet service after giving up on AOL dialup yrs ago and dropping my landline to save $. Wish me luck.
I went with Comcast after discussion on neighborhood blog made me realize it seemed only reliable option.
It is my fondest hope since my work is at UW where I am totally spoiled with highspeed internet. I would like to know what the schools on the HIll are using…both Kimball near me and Beacon Hill Elementary International School…what are we giving our future? All in All I wouldnt live anywhere else…maybe Columbia City. If we can do lightrail we can sure as hell do way way better here for service.
This neighborhhood used to be at the bottom of many lists so I am not surprised. However, we are activists, creating a fantastic new Park around JEfferson Community Center; we made the walking path around the golf course; we do block watch parties and
festivals; we are family centered and diverse (I raised a daughter here). And we have always been instrumental in elections….certainly in the election of our beloved President Obama. Years ago all elected officials walked door to door in my precinct shaking hands….Gary Locke, Jim McDermott. Gary Locke went to Beacon HIll Elementary! So why the heck arent we in line for top notch fiber?!!! I am all for it so the HIll can sing as one.
I just checked my Broadstripe connection. It’s 174 kbps upload and 309 kbps download.
I’m at 13th & Nevada, a few blocks west of the VA in mid-Beacon Hill.
We switched to Qwest DSL last year, after several frustrating years with Earthlink DSL. It’s pretty reliable, but too slow for my liking at 1.5Mbps.
We never even considered Broadstripe/Millennium. We get DirecTV (satellite).
I have been having severe speed issues with Broadstripe in the past month. Download speeds never exceed 1mbps.
I spoke to a customer service rep and was basically told that Broadstripe is having ‘speed issues’ with the Seattle area. No shit!!!
And the best part is, they are working on fixing the issue, but don’t know when it’ll get done. Could be tomorrow, or could be next month or maybe even more.
I cannot believe how a company like this can be allowed to exist! I hope Broadstripe is never able to fix these issues and goes out of business.
I’ve lived with Broadstripe for 7yrs now and with all the complaining, tongue in cheek tech support, service techs coming to my home etc NOTHING has changed. I encourage everyone to write or call Bruce Harrell or Jean Godden of the Seattle city council. Both sit on the technology commitee. I talked with an assistant of Jean’s awhile back when I heard the city renewed Broadstripe’s contract. I called to ask why,in light of all the complaints, bancruptcy etc that the city even considered renewing. What I gleened from the conversation (unofficially) was that the city was hoping that Broadstripe would fail or become a target for takeover (apparently their contract is year to year now instead of the last contract for 10yrs). You’d have to wonder whats going on now with Broadstripe since their new commercials aren’t touting their great service–it’s a commercial stating that if you’re stealing cable from Broadstripe they’re going to catch you with their new “sniffers”. I can’t remember any company increasing sales by accusing the general public of stealing from them–if anything they’re stealing from us.
I’ll be making some new calls to the city council to see where things are at. Again–I encourage everyone to do the same.
Thank you so much all for the comments. I am pursuing a call with Broadstripe to find out its response. If anyone wants to be in touch with me directly for a brief interview for a future article on this topic, feel free to use my TechNerd email (see upper left of page for link).
This ain’t over, folks!
Let’s not forget about QWest. If there were other broadband options other than cable that would increase the competition and provide additional options to consumers. QWest just installed Plain Old Telephone Service minutes ago to my home. I asked the super nice installer if he had any scoops regarding enhanced service. He said everywhere else in the city seems to be getting equipment needed for providing broadband, except Beacon Hill. The technician said that QWest had run into permitting problems placing the equipment.
So, while Broadstripe takes advantage of being the only game in town at the moment, QWest and the city are not totally free from having some responsibility for the current lack of broadband options within certain pockets of Seattle.
I have to say I found this sight by accident, but I could go on and on about issues I have had with my internet service since I signed up at the beginning of the year. After going round and round with phone reps I was in email conversation with techs who said they found nothing wrong, my computer must be screwed up. I build my own computers and told them what was wrong was that there is either an issues with the node, the installation or the modem, or multiple combinations of the above. They told me, point blank, I don’t know what I am talking about and to that I most likely had spyware and/or a virus.
I, at one point, kept track of every call I placed to Broadstripe and the average call was 75-100 minutes each, with, of course, no resolution.
After 4 1/2 months of issues, they finally sent a tech out, but oops they missed 3 separate appointments when either I or my roommate were home.
A supervisor finally offered to credit my time down due to their billing system issues, this only cause me to wait for that to be fixed, approximately 4 months later.
Finally, September 1st a tech came out, refused to test the line, handed me the new modem, didn’t let me explain about DNS issues, speed issues or anything else. He checked the signal strength in the modem setup and then left. The internet was working great for 4 whole hours.
From 7/22/09 to 10/26/09 the internet has gone down at least 650 times (I started keeping track, in a spreadsheet) with me either having to release/reset the IP address or reboot the modem.
Even so, the last month if I get 1Mbps download testing on speedtest.net, I am very lucky. In fact today my upload was nearly twice my download AT 1am. Not a prime time.
Please let me now if there is more information or an update on how I can assist as this is just not acceptable and DSL is not an option, due to it being even slower where I am at. At last the tech that came out from Qwest was honest and said the speed wouldn’t be more than 256k, if I was lucky and that would be if I had the 3 meg service. I said no, I don’t think I want to do that.
I’ve been following a recent thread of Central District News @ http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2009/10/26/broadstripe-internet-service-issues and one of the commenters posted the cities comment/complaint link : http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/cable/comments.htm
Thanks KT for the information, I submitted my 17 1/2 cents.
Also, got an email response from Broadstripe today, amazingly. They gave me a missed appointment credit for the appointment that was missed on 9/1/09 and are hopefully going to have a tech come out on 10/27/09, though, per their email, it might not resolve the issue when they leave because they have to fix some major issues out here. Why send the tech out if it won’t fix the issue then? Seems a waste of time for the tech and me, but I guess they are at least sorta trying.
They also credited me $32 and change, which though it doesn’t cover my service issues for the last 7-8 months, is a start. Though I now only have 1.5mbps as I write this. I did have 30 minutes at 3am today where I was around 5mpbs, but then it was gone as quick as it came.
I also have one of the MD IP address, which the techs say we should not have, out here. But, as another stated above, we do and the tech admitted that is causing some of the major latency issues and could be making our speed issues worse than they already are.
I live on Beacon Hill just off Beacon Ave two blocks south of the Seattle Super Market (not so super) and I’ve tried everything, but have settled for unsatisfactory DSL via Qwest. Broadstripe seems stuck in 1986. I get 2.6mbps at max and that goes out regularly due to “waterlogged” wiring outside and the fact that we are just so far from the wire box. Stupid and disappointing.
I have a secret wish for WiMax to finally become a reality and deliver really fast wireless broadband to me, but until then, I’m on hold with Qwest (literally and figuratively).
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