This is a bit off-topic for this blog, but it’s infrastructure related, so why not?
The Mayor’s office recently announced its intent to respond to a Request for Information (RFI) from Google to provide high-speed broadband to the city. This isn’t the first time a Seattle Mayor had a plan for city-wide broadband.
In 2004, then-Mayor Nickels created a Broadband Task Force to study some options. The task force’s report (pdf) recommended “citywide broadband service by 2015.” It also suggested the following:
Evaluate broadband technologies that might be used in a public network, especially FTTP, the bypass strategy, and use of wireless “last mile” as an interim step. An interim solution might produce revenue for the City, increase competition, demonstrate the City’s commitment to meeting its broadband goal, and serve as a first step towards an eventual FTTP build-out.
FTTP, or fiber-to-the-premises, is exactly what Google’s talking about building.
So what happened to the task force? In 2006, the task force released its own RFI, to determine if there were any private companies interested in building out such a network. After that, there was some push-back from the big telecom companies. From what I was able to uncover, a formal RFP was never issued, or was issued and never responded to.
Meanwhile, Seattle’s CTO Bill Schrier discussed an RFP in 2008, and has been quite vocal on his blog about the need to upgrade the city’s network. He and McGinn seem to see eye-to-eye on the need for high-speed broadband and it was part of McGinn’s campaign agenda.
So progress is happening, albeit slowly. In that regard, it’s important to see the Google effort as just one small piece of a larger agenda. Whatever happens with Google — and there are plenty of cities vying for the same pool of money — we shouldn’t let it distract us from the ultimate goal of city-wide FTTP broadband.
Last year, blogger Matt Yglesias took a look at the disparity in broadband speed among developed nations and concluded, “the high-performing countries are generally places where electronics manufacturers have more political clout than telecom firms and thus are able to force implementation of these open access policies. ”
In other words, if your country is home to companies like Nokia and Samsung that want to sell lots of shiny, net-enabled gadgets, you’re more likely to have cheap broadband.
Perhaps the rise of companies like Apple and Google (not to mention Microsoft), who benefit from cheap, ubiquitous high-speed broadband, along with a President who’s committed to a national broadband agenda, will finally be enough to turn the tide.
Out in Mason County our PUD electric supplier announced they wanted to run fiberoptics to every power meter and use real-time power metering. This, they said, would also provide a broadband internet and cable tv connection.
Unfortunately, the county is huge, and the amount of work involved in running a new wire to every house is almost unbelievable to me. You would think the size of the county would be equally daunting to the meter-readers, but, strange to say, they always turn up in the last few days of the month.
You can see where this goes, though- no meter readers, and the ability to know just how much power is needed at any time. Both of those attractive goals from the point of the PUD managers.