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Same here. Seattle has a city negotiated franchise agreement (a.k.a. monopoly) with Comcast. https://www.seattle.gov/cable/franchises.htm

I've heard that Verizon's Fios service is excellent...

What is amazing to me is that Quest doesn't take advantage of their existing right of way to build out last mile fiber. Lazy dinosaur. That right of way is a huge untapped asset.

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This really blew me away when we moved here. I'm assuming it was a carrot to get infrastructure build out but I have a hard time imagining that there wouldn't have been competition to do that even without the concession. I'd love to drop Comcast for an alternative.

Have you checked out Clearwire? http://www.clearwire.com/

They've got great coverage throughout Seattle and I have been very happy with their home internet plan. $50/month for unlimited data with 6mbps down and 1mbps up.

Yeah, I've heard of them but to be honest most of what I hear is bad. That's not personal experience, I've never used them, and I regularly do a search on Clearwire to see if things have improved. So far still seems to be a lot of issues, at least in Seattle.

That's actually not true.

I believe the Mayor's office has said they'd love to have more ISPs in Seattle, but the company's don't want to come in and lay down the cable.

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