Seattle Mayor: I have Comcast, and I would like better service

> He raised public parking rates to pay for street maintenance upgrades, safety at schools, etc. But, a lot of city streets have yet to be repaired

And of course, Mercer in Lower Queen Anne is getting every single street corner re-done for...no apparent reason.

I don't think this nullifies any of what the article discusses. Comcast only has as much of a monopoly as the city gives them, and this franchise agreement explicitly reserves the right to grant similar franchise agreements:

"This Franchise is not exclusive. The Grantee acknowledges and agrees that the City reserves the right to grant one (1) or more additional franchises or other similar lawful authorization to provide Cable Services within the City; provided, however, that no such franchise or similar lawful authorization shall contain material terms or conditions which are substantially more favorable or less burdensome to the competitive entity than the material terms and conditions herein."

Sounds like the mayor has decided to grant some other franchises. And, the article also explains in several places that Comcast is being given similar opportunities to work with the city on fiber rollout...satisfying the clause that nobody else gets preferential treatment.

And, this agreement is pretty focused on cable television service; it's an accident of history (and probably a mistake of regulation) that cable television companies are in the internet business, at all.

It sounds, to me, like the mayor is negotiating with any interested party, and is insisting that conduit construction include provisions for fiber. It's all within his purview, and the franchise agreement with Comcast doesn't nullify that.

That said, I think the cable monopolies (and telco monopolies) in the US have been disastrous for innovation and consumers (we have among the worst Internet service at the highest prices in the developed world). But, I am suggesting that the mayor of Seattle may be coming down closer to the right side of the issue than most.

That's happened in Green Lake and Wallingford as well. And it's really strange, because it doesn't appear to serve any functional purpose. A couple of them now serve to slow down neighborhood traffic (a good thing), but mostly they look like replacements for something that didn't need replaced.

When I moved to Seattle, I was very fortunate in that CondoInternet served my apartment building. They offered gigabit internet for $120 a month and 100mbps for $60. All after taxes, too. Coming from years of dealing with Comcast, this was a welcome change.

Increased availability for this level of quality would be great to see.

For the past year the city of Seattle has been hyping "gigabit seattle" as the solution. The idea is that a private group would get access to city fiber at/near cost and manage the actual service. The private group in this case is Gigabit Squared.

As far as I can tell Gigabit Squared is a sham. They have no previous completed projects. The dates and milestones reported to the press and recorded in the city meetings, like the CTTAB, are woefully different. Event the dates in the press are terribly vauge, and keep slipping anyways. First it was "in 2013", then "late 2013", and now it's "in 2014."

My neighbor has been trying to get implementation details for the past year. The Seattle mayors office said "contact our partner". Emails and phone calls to Gigabit Squared went unanswered. She then went to the mayors office, complaining that the "partner" was unresponsive. The reply? "We cant help you. You have to talk to gigabit squared for any details."

Last I looked they were missing little things like an ASN, network engineers, an operations group, facilities, outside plant techs and trucks. Their jobs page was a generic "ask about exciting opportunities". I find it a bit incredible that they could feasibly be launching a network of this scope inside of a year.

I hope it actually works, I'd love to stop giving money to Comcast. But what I see so far is another Seattle Monorail Project.