Seattle Plans to Lease City Fiber to Gigabit Squared in New Partnership
Seattle is partnering with Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to launch a fiber network throughout 12 neighborhoods. The network will bring fiber to the home as well as to businesses, leveraging the city’s “excess fiber capacity,” and include wireless to expand the reach to other parts of the city, Mayor Mike McGinn said Thursday. Seattle shut down its free municipal wireless network in May (CD May 8 p12) and its fiber network in July.
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Seattle had installed more than 500 miles of fiber cable in the greater metro area since 1998, the mayor’s office noted, by the time the Seattle City Council voted to make the municipally built fiber available for lease at his request this summer (http://xrl.us/bn6bzg). It submitted a request for interest regarding this fiber in October (http://xrl.us/bn6b3t). The partnership will be called Gigabit Seattle and has its own website (http://xrl.us/bn6bsf). Seattle will be joining several other cities such as Chattanooga, Tenn., and Kansas City, Kan., in offering Internet speeds up to a gigabit. It’s the first community in the $200-million Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program, which will launch similar endeavors in five other college communities. Gigabit Seattle will “aggressively” build and is expected to launch in fall of 2013, the network site said.
The dozen demonstration neighborhoods will connect more than 50,000 households to fiber, the mayor said. Gigabit Seattle will lease this fiber from the city, according to McGinn, who said it'll offer gigabit speeds -- a thousand times faster than “typical high-speed connection.” Gigabit Squared will own and operate the network, according to the site. These neighborhoods will also feature next-generation wireless cloud services, which will be expanded through fiber transmitters atop 38 buildings, McGinn said.
Leadership in a global information economy calls for “leadership in broadband networks, which is why Congress provided $4 billion to NTIA to invest in broadband projects nationwide,” said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling in a statement. The partnership will give Seattle “a strategic bandwidth advantage, and we look forward to watching the city leverage its innovation-ripe environment for economic growth,” he said.
The Gigabit Seattle website highlights the way gigabit speeds can help the city, spotlighting education, healthcare, public services and economic development. The network “will provide essential infrastructure to help us address some of our biggest problems in the areas of climate, the environment, education, energy, and transportation,” said University of Washington President Michael Young in a statement, calling it “definitely a game-changer.” Gigabit Seattle asks interested residents of other neighborhoods to register online, which will increase neighborhoods’ priority in getting the service next. The unfinalized rates will be “extremely competitive,” the FAQ said. It’s a “digital inclusion” network that calls for pricing that’s “not discretionary based on income level -- for households or businesses,” the site said. The wireless cloud network will also feature “cost effective access,” it added.
With the partnership, “we're able to do what none of us could do individually -- build a platform for economic development and business creation,” Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said in a statement. He praised Seattle’s “spirit of entrepreneurship, community advancement, innovation and invention.” Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin hailed the “exciting public-private partnership” in a statement, saying it should serve “as an example to communities all over the world of how universities and their local stakeholders can collaborate to drive economic opportunities by putting private investment to work alongside public capital.”