[Editor's Note: We originally published Glenn's article yesterday, and as usual, Glenn—aka PubliCola's TechNerd—is great at explaining all this stuff. We're moving the post up because it's worth keeping in play today.]
People served least-well by broadband in Seattle will take heart from Mike McGinn’s election as mayor. McGinn had high-speed, fiber-to-the-home Internet access—based on a plan developed earlier by the city—as one of his early campaign planks. The under-served include ethnic and racial minorities, as well as those who earn well below the Seattle median income, according to a report just released by the city. McGinn has said he wants everyone to have access to the 21st Century economy.
McGinn’s plan was developed in part by Bill Schrier, Seattle’s current chief technology officer. I interviewed McGinn about his broadband ambitions during the campaign, and Schrier shortly after. Schrier is passionate about having super-high-speed fiber optic triple play: 100 Mbps symmetrical Internet service, television including high-definition, and unlimited voice calling. In South Korea, you can get 100 Mbps both ways for US$14/month.
Schrier serves at the pleasure of the mayor, and McGinn likes what Schrier has to say. Thus the right people are in place to make a fiber-to-the-home plan happen.
This is because Schrier seems to run on the same operating system as McGinn.
Schrier’s office put some good combustibles on that fire with the release on Tuesday—nicely timed after the election—of the Information Technology Access and Adoption in Seattle report for 2009. The painstakingly collected information, gathered from over 1,000 surveys, weighted to include more ethnic minorities, especially Hispanic households. (Interestingly, no cell-only households were called, which represents an undersampling of a key and increasing demographic. A focus group was used to better understand cell-only homes, which included three-quarters of graduate student households.)
Similar surveys were conducted in 2000 and 2004, providing some great longitudinal comparisons. You can read an executive summary, a longer analysis designed for a general audience, and a technical report that drills into the survey at great length.
The key takeaways are that 84 percent of households have Internet access and 88 percent have computers, while 74 percent of those with Internet access have broadband (as opposed to dial up). These figures, the report notes, are above the averages gathered earlier this year by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. (Pew has been working longitudinally on the same kinds of questions for several years now.)
And, of course, ethnic minorities and those making less than $30,000 have substantially less computer ownership, in-home Internet, and computer experience. The report says 44.6 percent of Latino/Hispanic households and 66.6 percent of African American households have any Internet acess at home (dial up or broadband); for Caucasians, the access rate is 90 percent.
Also interesting is that while many Seattelites have broadband, “Three-fourths of those surveyed said that significantly faster Internet access would be somewhat or very valuable.” Ninety percent of households said Internet service is “very important” or “somewhat important” for all households to have Internet access (not just their own).
Finally, on the telecommuting front, the survey found that out of computer users who have a paying job, 66 percent use the Internet to work for home, whether for themselves or for an employer. 85 percent of telecommuters say “that significantly faster Internet access would be valuable.”
I’ve written before here about Beacon Hill and the Central District, the neighborhoods that seem to be worst served by broadband service from Qwest and Broadstripe. Broadstripe didn’t respond to a request for an interview I made about its service; the firm is currently in bankruptcy for financial reorganization. I have so far been unable to get an FCC spokesperson to explain in depth the complaint process to Broadstripe and Qwest broadband problems in those districts. (You can file a complaint at the FCC’s Web site, but I want to know what happens with those complaints.)
The city’s report on the cable TV side found that Comcast, which has 89 percent of Seattle’s cable subscribers, received an 89 percent “very satisfied” rate for the company’s customer service, up from 79 percent in 2004. Broadstripe went from 80 percent to 48 percent over that same period. This doesn’t cover broadband service, but it’s a telling fact since the same wire feeds both TV and Internet. Comcast’s territory is about 90 perecent of Seattle households; Broadstripe holds the rest.
When I spoke to Bill Schrier, he expressed frustration both at the poor availability of broadband and other services to Beacon Hill et al., and the lack of interest by incumbents in improving said services.
With McGinn as mayor, Schrier may get a quick go-ahead. And, as I reported earlier, it’s quite likely that Beacon Hill would be for all the reasons cited above the test bed for a new network.
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I’m not sure about the viability of this, but if they *could* make it work fiscally to be self-sufficient and a stand-alone utility like City Light…
Schrier rocks and he and Mcginn are are awesome pair. The studies shows this can work and Seattle’s got just the people to get it done!
@!: the viability has to be reproven, but costs are down considerably since the original estimate and feasibility study was made for all the component equipment. Installation might be cheaper because of lower labor costs, and hungrier companies eager for contracts.
The deal is, remember, revenue bonds: the case has to be made that the bondholders will finance the endeavor, which will repay them entirely from the proceeds of running the system, with the potential of extra revenue above bond repayments being available for other purposes.
first, the city needs to scrap the broadstripe deal. it’s fucking horrid.
second, i think investing in broadband is probably not wise long-term. there are some network connectivity technologies coming that will leapfrog the wire to the home, so making a big (and expensive push) is not smart.
third, the feds are giving out massive grants to communities for last mile fiber projects. they should build a strategy and get in line to get those $.
@4: The franchise board that covers the areas that Broadstripe has cable franchises may want to do that. Unfortunately, cable franchise boards can’t consider broadband service (as I understand it and as Schrier confirmed), because that’s federally regulated.
Because Broadstripe is in bankruptcy, the franchise board may have its hands tied, too. A downtown resident emailed me that his building couldn’t drop Broadband as a provider because the bankruptcy court wouldn’t allow contract options for cancellation to be exercised!
@Glenn: Another fun bit of this would be if a random ISP decided to sue Seattle for doing this, as we’ve seen in some other communities that did municipal wi-fi. Holmes versus AT&T!
@6: Joe, yeah, although Seattle is in a pretty remarkable position.
* There’s a market failure. Comcast cannot serve the whole city by franchise deals. It has said it will not install fiber. Qwest will not do fiber to the home, and has a very very slow fiber to the node plan.
* Washington state neither has nor seems to have any interest in pro-incumbent telecom laws regarding broadband. We’re not unique, but it’s not like Louisiana or Colorado where such laws were giant burdens.
That doesn’t mean we won’t see suits! But given that Tacoma has a 10-year-old similar network (fiber/coax hybrid), and that the two incumbents are specifically not building advanced networks such as Verizon has put FTTH in Kirkland and its Oregon markets, it’s a pretty difficult case to build.
Which campaign contributor will benefit from this deal? No more at 11.
Tacoma put in fiber optic cables a long time ago, about 10 years ago. They have affordable publicly owned cable and internet, called “Click”.
Seems like Seattle should be a little more ahead of the curve.
@8, this was in the works before McGinn made it through the primary. This is coming out of Nickels technology office.
There are other things that have to happen, and there is no reason not to do this part too. Seattle must upgrade its grid if we are going to be faced with more electric vehicles, electricity generated at hone, etc. We are going to need to see if we can get a two-fer, pushing the fat data pipes to homes and moving toward the smarter grid.
@9: Anna, “Tacoma put in fiber optic cables a long time ago, about 10 years ago. They have affordable publicly owned cable and internet, called “Click”.”
Yes, and it’s been a huge success in an interesting way. (Tacoma has technically a hybrid fiber/coax plant. Which means they use fiber optic for all the long connections but coaxial cable to homes. This was the only affordable way to build a network when they started.)
So the interesting way is that Click doesn’t own the Tacoma market. What were once US West (phone) and TCI (cable) had totally neglected Tacoma’s infrastructure and were focused on the suburbs.
Click being built actually helped what has become Qwest and Comcast: by creating a market and making it feasible for professionals who need high-speed Internet access in Tacoma to live there, Click spurred the two incumbents to improve their networks, compete, and gain new revenue. Comcast actually thanked Tacoma Power publicly years ago; not sure it would today, but it was seen as a big boost for the viability of competitive broadband.
Awesome, great initiative Mayor McGinn!
@11, Glen: Interesting history, thanks.
@12, and Mayor Nickels. Schrier’s office would not be Schrier’s office without Mayor Nickels.
I wonder how much trouble Comcast will be over this. They have a 10-year contract. I guess pressing the fiber to the home portion would be enough, since they are not going to do that.
http://www.seattle.gov/cable/comcast_franchise_agreement_draft.pdf
@Glenn: I live in North Beacon Hill (few blocks south of Amazon), and have had Comcast for the last 2+ years. I don’t understand the claimed lack of broadband coverage in Beacon Hill. Is there some coverage map on the interwebs I could view to see the holes?
@14: BeHi, the boundaries for Broadstripe covers most of Beacon Hill and the CD and some of downtown. The boundaries can be found in the franchise map at the Office of Cable Communications.
Yes, BeHi Roller, some folks are lucky(?) enough to be in a Comcast area (you know things are bad when we think that Comcast users are lucky), but much of Beacon Hill is Broadstripe only, and large chunks of Beacon Hill cannot get Qwest DSL either. (We are in that situation — Broadstripe, no DSL availability — in North Beacon near the Red Apple. But we could throw a rock and hit some neighbors who are in Comcast territory, since they are just across Beacon from us.)
As far as “holes” go, a map might not show holes, as theoretically those of us in the Broadstripe-only zone have broadband available. Part of the problem is that the so-called broadband we have is very, very slow and not very “broad” at all, and not as good as what other neighborhoods have.
Glenn, there is no such thing as a franchise board in Seattle.
Huh? Take a look at your cellphone, folks.
The market is moving low cost high speed broadband capability, and doing so rapidly — this is nothing the city needs to be doing. Since when is access to extremely high speed graphics for video games and movies a priority of government?
@17: Are you simply being pedantic or is there a difference between Seattle’s Office of Cable Communications (formal name) and a franchise board (informal name)?
The Office of CC says:
“The Office oversees the City’s non-exclusive cable television franchises with Comcast and Broadstripe (formerly known as Millennium Digital Media) through enforcement of the franchise agreements, with an emphasis on citizen concerns.”
In some places these are called franchise boards, franchise authorities, or by other names.
The function is the same. The authority responsible for one or more divisions of a municipality of any scale negotiates contracts with a cable television provider that may involve a form of tax, rights of way agreement, public access support, and other issues.
@18
I’d hardly call what the cell carriers offer either “high-speed” or “low-cost”. Sure they might work for a individual who just wants to surf the net occasionally but the cell carrier offerings don’t work for many businesses or people who work from home. The availability of decent telecommunications options is very much a factor in deciding where to locate a business.
Remote meter reading and trouble reporting for City Light and Seattle Public Utilities might offer enough cost savings for the city to justify a significant portion of the expense of building out a city-wide broadband system. Add in the ability to connect to every traffic light and city facility plus the ability to sell capacity to other government entities (State of Washington, Seattle Community College District, Seattle School District, King County, Port of Seattle, Sound Transit, etc.) as well as social service nonprofits and you can nearly justify it on those grounds alone.
The Verizon service territory in the area is getting FIOS. So far both Comcast and Qwest seem disinclined to offer anything similar any time soon in their service territories. Why shouldn’t Seattle build a broadband network, especially if it either results in no net cost to taxpayers or a net savings?
@20: Hey, Chris, the cell networks aren’t fast by comparison to, say, Comcast’s routine speeds in Seattle and most of the cities they serve. But compared to the average available DSL speed and cable speeds in networks that are poorly run or not upgraded to the latest standards, even today’s cell networks run as fast or faster, with the added advantage of mobility.
There will be a huge shift in perception when Clearwire comes to down with its true WiMax service. It currently has a pre-WiMax flavor that underperforms, but works in areas where you have no options. (A colleague at a home distant from a telco switch went from DSL to Clearwire, which was a giant jump, and then when Comcast upped its speed, moved to Comcast.)
Clearwire’s reviews in cities in which its launched WiMax are quite positive; it doesn’t cap its highest-tiered residential service (which is faster than and price competitive with Qwest’s non-fiber-backed DSL); and you can get a mixed mobile/fixed service for cheaper than a 3G cell plan today.
We’ll see how that plays out.
I like what Mayor McGinn is wanting to do. It’s needed and everyone should have the access regardless of personal affordability.
@21
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against what the cell carriers or Clearwire are doing. However to say the city shouldn’t bother because the wireless providers will cover the undeserved areas strikes me as being the same sort of thing as saying “why should we build light rail to the airport when you can just take a cab?”. I was also offended at the characterization that high speed service was only useful for video games and movies.
Please let me know how I can complain to the FCC about Qwest. I have a friend that was able to receive this “fiberpipe” service they’ve been promoting through advertising for a lower price than his traditional DSL in UTAH (!!!) meanwhile we are still stuck with irregular DSL speeds at my Central District home. I’m ready to switch to Comcast – they at least seem to be reliable/respectable.
@24: To file a complaint, start at this page and select Internet Service and VoIP. I don’t know what the FCC does with the complaints: that’s why I have tried to get a briefing from them on the subject!
But it can’t hurt to file complaints. The FCC often looks at preponderances of data.
Update: I’ve heard from Broadstripe; I’ll be talking to them soon and posting a new article here at Publicola.
@19 Glenn, I meant to say that at one time Seattle did have a cable franchise board. Sometime in the mid nineties the composition and duties of the board were changed to form a new citizens tech board with broader responsibilities.
Also, people should send complaints about Qwest phone service to the Washington UTC, No help with internet service though.
@27: I got it! Thanks for the clarification. The Office of Cable Comm incorporates the franchise function.
Qwest, yes: you can complain about voice at the state level; cable at the local franchise level; but VoIP and broadband are FCC only.
Last century’s Tacoma Click network was installed when the cost of ethernet/fiber network equipment and cable was hundreds of times higher than it is today.
With modern dirt cheap many times less expensive equipment than Tacoma had available to it, City Light could easily provide a high speed one gigabit per second ethernet pipe with internet access into every household/business at a fraction of the cost the Cadillac network Seattle’s Broadband committee has proposed. The cost would be trivial if the ethernet pipe was combined with the communication’s requirements of smart meters.
The cost of a fiber to the block network would be a small fraction of fiber to the home – less than $20 a household/business to the block level wired/wireless N access point plus subscriber connect costs of $100 for Cat 6E, $50 for Phoneline/Powerline, $50 for a WiFi mesh repeater or zilch to the customer’s wifi card. A buck or two a month would suffice for O&M.
Smart Phone/ATA based VOIP would cost nothing (Google Voice or City network access) nor would basic cable (local/Canadian channels)
The city network could grow like an amoeba block by block connecting subscribers for a service fee or higher first year monthly payment sufficient to cover network costs to that neighborhood requiring an insignificant investment from the city. Costs would be low enough that close to a 100% penetration should be achievable. If costs for some unforeseen reason spiraled out of control or subscribers stubbornly stuck to Big Telecom the SeattleLightNet would know about it after the first neighborhood was hooked up – risk is zilch. The easy peasy approach would be to start in areas with lots of apartment buildings.
The first neighborhood hooked up, would be called a test network to minimize political risk. It would take a city light crew a week or two to wire up a neighborhood to the block level (with wifi) with a few thousand dollars worth of staple to the pole ADSS cable, equipment boxes, and access points.
City light has an average of a hundred pairs of fiber running all over the city with 99% of households within a mile of that fiber. Because the City has not historically done network planning and its technology is so last century, that fiber is occupied by a jumble of ancient zero utilization 10 mbs ethernet connections which could be compressed to occupy only a few fibers. The cities telecom system is an old Nortel product introduced in the seventies worth a few thousand dollars on ebay. In the past, the City has had no qualified telecom engineers on staff and nobody with any knowledge of network planning. That the city had to hire a consultant from Boston of all places to produce a report using utterly absurd costs makes it seem that situation has not improved. A super expensive PON network should never have been recommended to council without the cheap and dirty but 99% effective fiber to the block approach presented as well.
Seattle citizens could also do it for themselves with a cheap open-mesh router for $25 which lets them share their internet and secure the home network at the same time. The more plugged in, the more they mesh up. No fuss no programming just plug em in. Open-mesh allows restricting the amount of bandwidth available to neighbors. Contributors can also require logins, resell it if desired, restrict on mac addresses, and boot heavy users.
If people with enlightened social attitudes or a just a dislike of the phone company, switched to open-mesh WiFi routers from their junk easily compromised equipment Big Telecom sells, Big Telecom would be taking a serious beating and the world would be a better place.
Calling your city council person and kicking their ass would also be helpful.
@29: seth: I appreciate your sentiments, but you are radically overstating the case.
“Last century’s Tacoma Click network was installed when the cost of ethernet/fiber network equipment and cable was hundreds of times higher than it is today.”: Maybe an order of magnitude, but the cost of labor and physical infrastructure (such as putting wire up) hasn’t gone down, and it’s a significant portion of installation cost. Also, the cost personnel to build and manage the network isn’t lower, nor to run a 24/7 network operation center.
The cost of equipment to run the network, the gear in each house, and so forth is radically cheaper, but not 1/500th cheaper.
You seem incredibly well informed, but your estimates of per-home connection costs are simply insanely low for a robust, reliable network.
Now, absolutely, Verizon’s cost for FiOS in its market is much higher than the cost would be here, based on the fact that Seattle City Light owns its infrastructure and such.
But honestly, this is too much! (Too little.)
Actually Glen there are about 400K electric meters in the city so in the unlikely event everybody wanted to pay $120 service charge for 1 GigE ethernet, the cost would be around $60 million about 15% of the Cadillac system. My guess is at more than half the initial customers would use the wireless connection.
The beauty of the cheap and dirty is that is self financing and a test installation integrating smart meters can be quickly and easily set up with a city light crews.
The clue here is that it is at the bottom level of the network where the greatest portion of the costs are incurred. DSL and cable offerings use consumer level equipment at this level. I choose Cisco/Linksys for this level as I have found no difference operationally or maintenance wise to the bloated high cost “enterprise” Cisco equipment network dilettantes love to specify. Meraki in San Francisco and other locations runs fine on its low end equipment as do many of the new open-mesh networks.
In related news, the City of Edmonds (Little ol’e Edmonds), just won (Oct 2009) a pivitol court case that allows them to sell excess bandwidth to homes and business’s. (They have multiple 10g internet connections available) This removed the key stumbling block for municipalities (bonding authority)wishing to set up a broadband utility or partner with the private sector on a “fiber to the premise” (FttP) network.
The newly announced Google Fiber for Communities, http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi, reminded me of this article. It seem like a perfect opportunity for a public/private partnership in this case. I just hope they execute better than their previous WiFi projects.
Seth is the most accurate regarding the current situation. I did an internal analysis for SCL on the original DOIT proposal. Their business model for the last mile was flawed– way too conservative regarding buildouts and private ISP's. Technology has improved to the point of having many more choices for the last mile. FTTH is ideal, but you also don't have to depend upon private investment OR the city to pay for it. With other alteratives like BPL modems and WiFi were geographically feasible, you wont get 100 MB, but you will get 30 to 50 dependant upon network overhead.
Tacoma's Click network is the WRONG model, if you truly want to the underserved to get access, and everyone to have a low-cost alternative. Click is no less expensive, due to Private ISP profits and overhead, than just going with Qwest or Comcast in the first place. Verizon's FIOS is also not being deployed everywhere in this area, and has some other limitations and problems that make it a lessor choice in comparison to what a full muni broadband could provide.
The 2009 consultants report also assumed the same DOIT model, and has the same flaws. In the end, what killed this was Qwest and Comcast screaming unfair competition to the State. Now that the Edmonds court case was decided favorably, it appears that is no longer the main barrier. This CAN be done on a self-supporting basis, although it would not be Triple Play immediately. Still, how would you like 30-50MB of minimally filtered broadband for $20 per month, no tax? That is what you could do it for, based upon a utility model, like water and power.
Don't get your hopes up for Google. Seattle is not the type of environment Google is most interested in. Unless they can control it completely. They are also more interested in small cities than medium or large ones, from what I gathered. I think this is a distraction, and will not do what most HOPE it will.