Seattle Exploring Muni Broadband, Other Options After Gigabit Squared Partnership’s End
The Seattle Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (CTTAB) is moving ahead with its review of the feasibility of municipal broadband in concert with the city government’s moves to figure out the best path forward after its partnership with the University of Washington and the now-defunct Gigabit Squared failed earlier this year. Seattle announced plans in December 2012 to launch a fiber network in 12 neighborhoods (CD Dec 14/12 p10), but Mayor Ed Murray said in January that the partnership was dead due to persistent funding and debt issues with Gigabit Squared (http://bit.ly/1vON5PL).
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Murray, a Democrat, has since disclosed a broadband plan for the city to explore municipal broadband and public-private partnerships, along with legislation to reduce regulatory barriers to private broadband network expansion. The City Council passed legislation Sept. 29 to roll back some rules and provide incentives for smaller broadband cabinets to hold equipment (http://bit.ly/1nZLNTb). CTTAB planned two town hall meetings Wednesday on municipal broadband, which board Chairman Ben Krokower told us would help the board better advise Murray and the city council.
Krokower said he and the rest of CTTAB’s board members are “agnostic at the moment” on whether municipal broadband is preferable to a new public-private partnership or other options. “We're in the very beginning phases of educating ourselves and the rest of the city on the issue,” Krokower said. “We don’t know all of the challenges involved yet, but we also don’t have a clear idea yet about what all the benefits are. All of us would like cheaper broadband, of course. But I think we also need to learn about what other benefits there might be."
Christopher Mitchell, who’s leading the town hall meetings and is director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said he wasn’t participating to convince CTTAB that municipal broadband is preferable to other options but planned to discuss case studies and possible benefits of such projects. Seattle’s lack of success with the Gigabit Squared partnership isn’t particularly surprising, but it may help its government “re-evaluate how strong of a role they want to play as opposed to entrusting it to an outside entity,” Mitchell said. “I certainly think all possibilities are on the table right now. I think they should still look at partnerships, but they should also look at whether they should take on a more active role in providing services.”
Seattle would be “blazing a trail” if it chose to move in the direction of municipal broadband, given that no U.S. city of its population size has deployed a government-owned network, Mitchell said. More than 652,000 people live in Seattle, while the largest cities that have municipal networks are Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lafayette, Louisiana, Mitchell said. Chattanooga has a population of more than 173,000, while Lafayette has more than 124,000 people.
Seattle is “further up the learning curve” on municipal broadband than New York or other major cities that are exploring it, Mitchell said. “They're still trying to feel their way on these issues and it’s hard.” Seattle would need to decide, for instance, whether to deploy citywide or institute a pilot program, Mitchell said. “If it’s not citywide, then you get into a political question of which neighborhoods get it,” he said. “That’s obviously a difficult question.” The smaller municipalities that have deployed muni broadband thus far wouldn’t be a direct corollary for a Seattle-sized project, because “in smaller communities you can deploy a network in a more rapid time frame,” and because elected officials in smaller municipalities have more of a connection to their constituents, Mitchell said. A Seattle-sized project would also require a far larger investment that might not pay off before an elected official’s next election cycle, he said.
Bartlett Cleland, Madery Bridge Associates managing director and Institute for Policy Innovation resident scholar-tax and innovation policy, said Seattle should be cautious about pursuing municipal broadband given a “highly suspect” track history for such projects. Government-owned networks are feasible only in “very narrow” circumstances such as rural areas where private sector ISPs aren’t able to deploy broadband, he said. An urban area like Seattle is probably the type of area that’s “least likely” to produce a successful municipal broadband network because it will typically overbuild existing providers’ networks, Cleland said. “It would just be an excuse to have the government own a means of competition against the private sector.”