Seattle to deploy Gigabit fiber network | Hacker News Reader

Seattle to deploy Gigabit fiber network

seattle.gov

201 pointsaaronbrethorst155 comments

it is just getting better and better to live here in Seattle. Legalization of weed, same-sex marriage, and now high-speed internet

The bad thing about WA state is the tax structure -- no corp or personal income tax (good), but the B&O tax is a gross receipts tax, really complex (it varies by county and by type of business), and has pyramiding (as do all gross receipts taxes) -- it's equivalent to a 12-15% corp income tax for many businesses. If you don't use 2-3 levels of contractors, or have a lot of work done as subassemblies, it should be ok -- for a software/internet startup who buys hosting from a single provider only, it is probably more like a 3-4% income tax.

It's still better overall than most states, but I'd prefer a different corporate income tax structure. Even a 5-10% corporate income tax, with no minimum, would be fine. The worst part about California corporate taxes is the $800 minimum; if you got rid of that, it would be pretty reasonable I think.

Can you expand on why the lack of personal income tax is a good thing? Instead, WA has roughly 10% sales tax which some would say disproportionately taxes the poor.

Lower personal income tax, all other things equal, is better. I wasn't trying to directly compare sales tax vs. personal income tax vs. payroll tax vs. corp income tax vs. capital gains vs. property tax. Just that B&O/gross receipts is worse than corp income tax.

I'm personally pro something like a broad VAT with a $20k credit or $50k exemption, including property. In general, consumption taxes seem preferable to income or investment taxes, in that they deter consumption vs. deterring investment. Consumption has fewer inherent positive externalities than investment or income. And then add additional taxes for the purpose of capturing and offsetting externalities like pollution, traffic, etc., rather than strictly as revenue.

And I'd really like to see experiments on taxing status goods. Create or find things like they have in game economies, which are not really necessary or important, and which are purely purchased for signaling value, and tax those. Raising the taxes on those things, thus raising cost, is beneficial to the buyers and to society. (I think Scott Adams from Dilbert has proposed this.)

It's good in that it's efficient (consumption = income-savings so it is good that it does not tax savings), but it's bad in that it's regressive. The easiest way to make it progressive is by offering a rebate check to residents for poverty-level spending (or 2x poverty perhaps). This makes it highly progressive: low income earners actually get money from it on net. The problem is that a rebate check provides a perverse incentive for people to claim residency in the state.

Another way of saying this is that it's regressive because it's flat, but it's a better tax overall if you could unflatten it.

I hadn't thought of the "residency arbitrage" problem at the state level. Presumably it would work a lot better at the federal level as a result; we already have lots of effort put into both becoming a citizen and determining who is and is not a citizen.

The other benefit of a negative tax (negative consumption tax or negative income tax) is that we could then get rid of virtually all other benefits and entitlements -- just increase the base subsidy. There's no reason to administer a food stamp program if you just give everyone a $20-30k/yr income. Same thing with student aid; why give someone subsidized loans when you can just give them $20-30k/yr and tuition/etc. costs $10-40k/yr, so a feasible part-time job (or private scholarship) covers the cost of going to school at Harvard, and you can actually save money if you instead go somewhere cheaper.

I'm not 100% in favor of giving everyone free stuff, but I'd far prefer to just give everyone free stuff vs. build an expensive bureaucracy to administer a program which incentivizes poverty and disability (a huge fraction of the SDI payments are to people who are basically employable and functional, but who can't get jobs; if they had an independent $20-30k income, there would be nothing to discourage them from doing $5-10k extra in legal work.) Obviously services other than pure transfer payments would still be needed, but the majority of welfare programs are about the transfer payments; counseling and other support could be charity, commercial, or funded separately.

Nice to meet someone with my exact policy views! :-)

There's another huge problem that it solves besides just administrative costs. Currently marginal tax rates near the poverty line are very high due to loss of access to need-based programs like foodstamps (exactly how high depends a lot on individual circumstances). It's a horrible burden on the working poor that nobody seems to understand. More discussion here: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-flat-t...

I suspect he thinks it's good because he's not poor.

Sadly false for two reasons. (If I wanted a directly and short-term self-serving policy, I'd just advocate for a $1t/yr national defense budget, half of which to be spent on IT security; I actually think total defense spending should be $50-100b. I am confident I have little enough political power to not matter.)

Washington's general sales tax rate is 6.5%, which is similar to the general sales tax rate in all other states that have one. Most other states, in addition to a 5-7% general sales tax, also tax personal income. I've looked, but have failed to find what the taxpayers in those states are getting for their overall higher taxes.

As an aside, OR to the south of WA doesn't have a sales tax at all, but rather an income tax, which would come out to about 9% for me if I lived there. In WA I pay about a 9% sales tax on things I purchase excepting housing and food. When you do the math, whether I'm rich or I'm poor; my taxes are lower in WA - unless I'm spending obscene amounts of money buying stuff other than housing and food (edit: or don't have an income but do purchase goods and services).

Also, I don't know if it's related or not, but WA does have a much more vibrant economy than OR and most other states with an income tax.

Little known fact - income derived from sales to people outside WA is no subject to B&O tax. An Internet startup will likely have only 2% of their users in WA, and so only that much is subject to B&O tax.

This is not a tax advice, consult a competent accountant.

The issue is purchasing services within WA -- those services will be marked up due to B&O (tax pyramiding).

the 0.5-1% rate on final sales is inconsequential; it's the tax pyramiding on every purchase before that. Admittedly it matters a whole lot less for a startup than for a purely local business (say a coffee shop who buys bread locally which is made from facilities, staff, and multiple other inputs, each of which is also produced within the state and has gross receipts taxes added.

It's particularly bad because it essentially discourages outsourcing and encourages vertical integration, counter to efficiency and new business formation. The same product can cost a lot more if you use the best components and best assembly vs. more expensive and lower quality things produced entirely in-house.

I don't get it.

When I am shopping for hosting services or hardware, I am shopping across entire country, I don't care if the vendors had to markup this or that, and I don't have to buy local, and vendors don't mark up their prices based on my location within US.

When selling, I am paying tax only on sales to WA residents, which is like 1% of my world-wide sales, and on those I am paying like 0.5% gross receipts tax. So it's 0.005% tax rate total.

How did you end up with "for a software/internet startup who buys hosting from a single provider only, it is probably more like a 3-4% income tax." ???

Most businesses buy a lot of products and services locally. It is infeasible for your garbage collection service or other utilities to be sourced from outside the local area, for a lot of goods there are licensing or transportation issues which make them local, etc.

Internet companies are a huge exception to normal businesses. (which is why they're so awesome and can turn into scalable startups so easily). Income tax is on profits, so if you have a low margin business, or an earlier startup business, you'd be paying low total income taxes even at the 3-4% rate., so a tiny B&O direct expense and higher costs for facilities, contractors, etc. translates to a much higher equivalent income tax rate.

B&O isn't a good argument against setting up your tech company in WA; it's just an unfair tax which penalizes some businesses (inherently local ones) while favoring others (prof services and internet). (the only good argument against tech startups in Seattle is the somewhat-smaller-than-Bay-Area pool of tech workers, largely better now than it was 10y ago when they were just Boeing and Microsoft, and the lack of great VCs (there are a few, but not the best in the world, and not many vs. SF, NYC, or Boston).

I don't quite understand how it could be that high...for software sales (which I assume falls under the retail classification) the B&O tax rate is .471%. On $1M gross that's $4710. In order for that to be equivalent to a 10% income tax, you would have to be only netting $50k on that $1M, which would be incredibly low margin. Did I miss something?

That and the rain.

Not to mention the tech industry, super heroes, and nature trails. I am bullish on Seattle.

Need to get myself to Seattle.

WA also has relatively permissive firearms laws, especially compared to California and NYC. For me, that's a good thing; I guess for some people it's a bad thing.

They're not quite as good as NV or some other states (SBR, automatic, etc. require a business engaged in that as a business, or a trust, vs. personal ownership), but essentially fine. I'd probably have an FFL07 side business if I were up there all the time anyway.

Fix that whole rain thing and I'll be there tomorrow.

Why fix what isn't broken? Some people enjoy the rain.

It's great, I totally don't have to water the garden most of the year. Thanks nature!

It doesn't actually rain here. We just tell people that to keep out Californians.

Yep. I have an internship there this summer, and I'll be moving from Calgary, which gets the most hours of sunlight of any city in Canada. Hope the change won't be too jarring/depressing... it was overcast every day when I was there for interviews.

Summers are why you live in Seattle. 80°F, sunny, and beautiful every day (after July 5th)! We get about 16 hours of sunlight on the summer solstice.

There are actually cases of people getting SAD from the over abundance of sunlight in the summer (http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/10/depression-from-too-mu...)

Moving from seattle to the bay area you basically get that for about 8/9 months on end.

The summer is the time for sun in Seattle. This entire summer was clear skies every single day.

http://www.seattleweatherblog.com/rain/record-dryness-windin...

This summer was awesome, but it was not typical. Summer 2010 was terrible. 60 degrees and cloudy/rainy throughout.

So far that makes 3 confirmed interns, it would appear microsoft has recruited half the comp sci department.

I used to live a few hundred kilometers away from Seattle in the same temperature area, I can say for sure I'm looking forward to this summer!

Nice, always great to run into someone else from the u of c. Happy so many people from our school made it. Did you interview?

Yup, interviewed on the 30th. It was a lot of fun, which you knew. Now I'm trying to convince all my friends to apply.

My buddy in 4th yr Software Engineering just got a fulltime job there.

Come on!.. it only took me 17 years to get used to the rain (Came from South America).

Better start packing up then! See this: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/12/does-it-really-rain-al...

It doesn't rain all the time in Seattle, but it rains almost every day most of the year. When I lived in Seattle, I remember some months when the sky was gray 24/7. Crushing, relentless gray. It felt like living inside a concrete dome. :\

No it doesn't. Seattle has some of the best summers anywhere; it's one of the city's best-kept secrets. July and August are gorgeous.

The relentless gray of which you speak is true of months like December and January.

Exactly, the summer only lasts for July and August. November to February it rains non-stop, and every other month is hit or miss. You can't really plan any trips because those clouds come out of nowhere. And that was the worst part. I would wake up and the sun is shining. I decide to go ride some trails on my bike, half way to the location it starts to rain. Plans ruined.

Those two months are the best summer you'll find anywhere. When I moved to SF, I missed them dearly. SF summers are terrible, and I found three of them more depressing than seven rainy winters in Seattle ever were.

I'll also take nonstop rain from Nov-Feb any day over the snowy winters in the Midwestern states where I grew up.

Finally, the key to not letting your plans get ruined by rain is to always plan for the possibility of rain. =)

Yes, Seattle summers are beautiful. 10 months of rain makes for a very green summer. :)

Outside of winter (November -> March) the rain is really light and doesn't interfere with wandering around outside. But I'm a Seattlite =).

Yes, this. An old roommate of mine who was a Seattle-area native called it "spitting drizzle". It's like an agressive fog.

cpeterso is likely a member of Lesser Seattle. Started by curmudgeon Emmett Watson as a way to discourage Californians from moving to Seattle.

When I travel, I always emphasize the rain, the cloud cover, the risk of death by volcano, the very real likelihood very overdue The Big One earthquake, how traffic sucks, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Seattle

Whatever you do, don't tell them about the statue of Lenin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin,_Seattle

No, we used to have a concrete dome, and it didn't actually feel the same. It was much nicer inside the actual dome.

Good point! And I remember when they blew it up. :)

OTOH, grey skies make photography easier and better.

The problem with Seattle isn't as much the rain, as it is the cloud cover and lack of sunlight in Seattle. In the wintertime, those two combine for a fairly negative effect.

That said, sometimes it does rain a lot in Seattle. Some years ago there was a stretch of 35 consecutive days of rain.

Putting high speed Internet (and weed, really) on the same level as marriage equality feels a little...cheap.

But, I agree with your sentiment. I love living in Seattle.

The drug wars effect on minority communities is often overlooked. The legalization of weed is a civil rights victory.

Good point. I have a hard time shaking my "white stoner kid" stereotype.

Legalizing marijuana keeps people out of prison sentences which ruin their lives and strikes the first blow against the war on drugs, which is the greatest civil rights disaster of recent decades.

Marriage equality makes a little bit of legal paperwork more convenient and provides symbolic equality. An injustice, but a smaller one.

High-speed internet (and better internet access in general) is a win-win for communication & education, leading to a more open society and encouraging and facilitating change like marriage equality.

The war on drugs is perhaps the biggest civil rights fiasco currently. Unnecessary and unjust incarcerations are absolutely inexcusable, and they fall almost exclusively on the minorities. i502 is not a bill about getting high, there is so much more to it.

Private health insurance sucks ass in WA, but other than that it does look good :)

"Private health insurance sucks ass in WA"

I wasn't aware of any place that was particularly ~good~ for private health insurance.

WA doesn't seem worse than anywhere else -- $118 for a 33yo male for HSA compatible. All the quotes I've seen for individual health insurance in WA are good, and they have a lot of the "good" features of ObamaCare already.

118 with what? In IL I could find a 0 coinsurance plan at least, starting at around 300 depending on deductible. You can't do that in WA, they all have 30-35% coinsurance, they have deductibles of 10+ and out-of-pocket maximums at twice of that.

It looks like agents are able to find a much better option, presumably inside group plans, but still.

Oh, I'm comparing to California. For $118 you get an HSA HDHP (but with great coverage, including preventive care, from $0, with full coverage once you hit the yearly $3500). For $200-300, you get a very low ($5-10) coinsurance.

I judge health insurance by the coverage for catastrophic accident or major illness; lifetime limits, access to best doctors, etc., not on the $0-20 copays.

I'd use leaky.com to do the comparison, once they expand from cars to health insurance (which I assume they will).

That and the transportation. Otherwise, Seattle is probably the place I like to live in the states the most.

The traffic and lack of good public transport options is a serious negative :(

Depends what kind of transportation, though; when I lived there, I made use of the great bicycle infrastructure[1] every day, and really loved how much better that was than any other US city I'd lived in.

But yeah, the other forms of transportation (including plodding your own car through the traffic) kinda suck.

[1]: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=...

Biking and public transit in seattle are both hit or miss, although both are also improving. If you need to bike into downtown then you're fucked, you better be an aggressive, confident biker who's ok riding in heavy traffic and sharing lanes with cars. If you just want to bike recreationally rather than to get somewhere then things are a lot better.

As for public transit there are two big problems. One, coverage outside of the core downtown areas is comparatively sparse and irregular. Two, buses generally get stuck in the same traffic as cars and metro isn't smart enough to figure out how to adjust the schedules. This can mean that the same commute by bus can take an additional hour depending on the time of day. Also, using public transit for anything other than commuting to/from a normal 9-5 weekday job can be a huge hassle. These problems are very slowly being fixed though.

Okay, if your entire route is along the Burke, bicycling is great. But if you have to go anywhere in downtown, you chose between battling cars and riding the bus. (Disclosure: I biked SODO to and from Cap hill for a while. 4th Ave during rush hour is a nightmare =).)

Biking in Seattle is great in some areas, horrid in others. Plus, HILLS.

Free workout! My office is moving to East Lake which puts it within biking distance, but the hills between here and there are going to be pretty rough for a while.

Well, the Bay Area has pretty abysmal traffic as well.

Seattle has fantastic transit, as long as you pick the right neighborhoods to live in. Basically, any neighborhood surrounding downtown has fantastic transit, as well as the U. District. Transit to the major job centers in the suburbs is also quite good.

Have to disagree - lived in Seattle 2 years, have also lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, SF, and NYC - Seattle's transit is by a very wide margin the worst out of that bunch.

It's serviceable for some contrived use cases, but a long, long, long, loooong way from "fantastic".

I lived in Belltown first, and then Capitol Hill (right along the Broadway corridor) - both transit experiences were pretty shitty.

The transit is serviceable during off hours, but during rush it is an absolutely, completely unmitigated clusterfuck. All buses leading out of downtown are at crush capacity, and the ridiculous rule that back doors can't be opened means that at every stop there is a massive pile of human bodies as people towards the back shove and squeeze their way to the front to get out - only to run into crowds of people outside trying to get in.

If you work in the central business district, and live in one of the nicer "trunk line" neighborhoods, and you can stagger your work hours to avoid the worst of the inhumanity of Seattle transit during rush hour, you can get to work pretty well. If any one of the three conditions is not met, commuting via transit is going to be absolutely dreadful.

The only place I've ever experienced transit worse than Seattle was in the industrial slums of London, Ontario.

They discontinued the free-zone a month or two ago, so passengers can now get off the bus at the rear exit.

Uh...but the original rule at elimination of the ride-free zone was that you can get off ONLY at the rear of the bus.

There were drivers who were enforcing this with an iron fist.

They've since backed off, but it's pretty clear that the people making the rules at King County Metro do not ride the bus.

Also, unless the attendants with portable scanners are present, you can't enter the back of the bus unless you're willing to cheat -- it's a double-edged sword.

The issue with the free ride for me was when you were on a bus that was leaving/had left the free ride area, you had to exit the front so that you could pay. That was a major pain in the ass on a full bendy-bus.

Eliminating the free-ride zone has solved all the problems from my perspective. I see no issue with only allowing people to enter at the front; it doesn't cause any hassle as far as I have seen. I guess it would be an issue if you really felt the need to sit at the back?

to expand on jlgreco's point, not only are you now allowed to get off in the back it is strongly encouraged. Advertisements as well as signs on the bus itself tell you to get off in the back, and in my experience everyone does. Even though it's only been a couple months, bus rides are noticeably faster.

You are correct about rush hour busses out of downtown being absolutely packed though. While it can be an unpleasant ride, passengers are very rarely turned away.

It is not remotely fantastic.

I live 2.4 miles from my workplace -- Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square and I could run to work faster than the non-transfer bus that went between my front door and 2 blocks from work.

Now that they've changed the bus system (Sept 2012)? That's a transfer. Yes...between one of the most densely populated neighborhoods and a reasonably dense job district.

During rush hour, with bus transfer, that could take over 48 minutes for 2.4 miles -- that's 20 minutes/mile or 3 miles per hour. I've walked it in that amount of time +/- 2 minutes.

Traffic and public transport in Seattle is not as bad as Atlanta.

Or Philly, or Balitmore, or DC.

NYC has it beat, but how could it not?

"lack of good public transport options"

Granted, there's currently no subway, but within the city there's light rail, a decent bus system, streetcars, and generally bike-friendly infrastructure aside from the steep hills. There may be a lack of an excellent public transportation system, but there's still a good one in place.

I've been using a combination of Zipcars and Uber for my other transportation needs.

I've been living in Seattle for over 8 years now without a car, public transit is good enough for me...

That and the horrible weather. If the northwest's weather didn't suck so much, I would never have moved back down to the bay area.

Our summers are glorious :)

Don't you get bored with the constant sunshine?

> "Don't you get bored with the constant sunshine?"

(former Seattleite, and the weather has been the absolute greatest gain from moving away)

The summers were amazing. For those 2, maybe 3 months if we were lucky, I enjoyed the hell out of life. But as soon as the rain started, I had trouble staying motivated. I wasn't depressed either, cause I was happy and had a great time there, but there is only so much you can do while it's raining and cold.

Personally I don't want to live in Seattle because of the earthquake risk that nobody is prepared for.

See http://discovermagazine.com/2012/extreme-earth/01-big-one-ea... if you don't know what I'm talking about.

We've been prepping for "the big one" for generations. Many have become complacent. We're more worried about earthquakes causing a "lahar" mud slide off Rainier and plowing through lowlands. Evacuation drills are down to about 4.5 minutes.

Earthquakes are a good reason not to live anywhere on the Pacific coast. Hurricanes are a good reason not to live in the southeast, or apparently, New Jersey. And I don't want to live in "tornado alley"...

Edit: That article is just more FUD, designed to be fed to people who enjoy being afraid. There's no new knowledge there.

We've been prepping for "the big one" for generations.

I absolutely know this to be false.

I grew up just north of you in Victoria. I was a teenager when they began piecing together evidence that earthquakes of that magnitude actually could hit the area. Before then there was no thought to preparation. And large parts of my home town are still on landfill, close to sea level. (Which is not what you want during an earthquake...)

Earthquakes are a good reason not to live anywhere on the Pacific coast.

The earthquake risk in California is well-understood and the area is prepared for it. That risk is quite acceptable to me. The Pacific Northwest is less prepared, and has the potential for an earthquake over 10x bigger than anything that California has to worry about.

That article is just more FUD, designed to be fed to people who enjoy being afraid. There's no new knowledge there.

It was one of the top links when I searched for "Cascadia superfault". I did not research it carefully. I would not expect it to contain novel information.

People are prepping for earthquakes here. The unsafe viaduct is coming down. Schools are getting seismic retrofits. Kids are doing earthquake drills. People who aren't tinfoil hat survivalists (me) are keeping 3 days of food and water handy.

I respect your difference in risk tolerance, but don't think we're oblivious to earthquakes here. That's just slanderous :)

Maybe BC isn't prepared, but here in WA we do earthquake drills just like we do fire drills, and in some areas they also do lahar evacuation drills too. We've conducted studies on our numerous bridges, and we're retrofitting some and demolishing or replacing others. I don't know what people in California are doing to prepare that we in WA are not doing.

That's probably one of the top links because it's so new, but most of its details are from more than 20 years ago. It doesn't even mention the expectation of the "big one" triggering a reaction from Mt Rainier, causing a "burp" and a lahar landslide.

I live in the heart of "tornado alley" and it's really not a noticeably big deal. Our local sirens haven't gone off in years.

On the other hand, living in N. Central FL, there were several times where my life was disrupted for days by hurricanes.

I think almost every region in the country is overdue for some disaster that is predicted to happen any day now.

We have the yellowstone volcano here in Colorado...

You mean Wyoming, right? Yellowstone is closer to Idaho and Montana than it is Colorado.

It's the Doomsday scenario for Denver. If the Yellowstone super-volcano erupts Denver is toast.

I think you could say North America has that one.. ;)

The odds are very high that it will not go off in our lifetimes.

The odds are high that it will not go off in the time that the United States of America is a country.

The odds are reasonable that it will not go off in the time that homo sapiens is a species.

If it does go off, it will be the largest disaster on record, the United States as we know it will be destroyed, and it will be a worldwide threat.

Let's not worry about it, shall we?

I have a general policy about not worrying.

Either it happens, I have enough warning and I live, it happens and I don't have enough warning so I die, or it doesn't happen. No sense worrying in any case.

My point is just that if it goes off, the problem won't be just Colorado's.

Was that just a way to bring up that earthquake, or do you actually live in fear of natural disasters day to day?

I grew up just north of Seattle, in Victoria, BC.

Concern over the possibility of that earthquake happening in my lifetime is one of the reasons why I do not want to return there, or want my children to put down roots there.

Hooray! Now I have one less thing to lose by leaving Kansas City!

RE: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4917132 (from today)

Just make sure you move to Actual Seattle and not the sprawling suburbs. As someone who has used PhoneFactor for a few years, thanks, congrats, and welcome to Seattle soon!

Thanks, good to hear it.

Alas, we'll probably land in the burbs for all the usual uninteresting reasons. But it won't hurt to have the right people seeing Gb internet across the lake.

Well if you must live in the suburbs (Microsoft has a private bus fleet that ferries people from the city out there), they at least have some FiOS out there. I've heard Frontier stopped deploying it, but that existing deployments are maintained.

For what usual uninteresting reasons?

All the reasons that people move to the 'burbs are (a) sociologically interesting and (b) irrelevant on an acquihire salary.

Is "I want good schools for my kids without spending more than an hour stuck in traffic each day" uninteresting enough for you? This may be somewhat particular to the Redmond/Bellevue/Seattle, but these same things are considerations for everyone I've talked to out there.

You know, it just occurred to me that my dad got his PhD in urban planning and I remember him presenting 3-D graphic computer models of commuting back in the 70's. Perhaps that's why I think this should be an uninteresting and solved problem by now. :-)

The initial 12 neighborhoods include: Area 1: the University of Washington’s West Campus District, Area 2: South Lake Union, Area 3: First Hill/Capitol Hill/Central Area, Area 4: the University of Washington’s Metropolitan Tract in downtown Seattle, Area 5: the University of Washington’s Family Housing at Sand Point, Area 6: Northgate, Area 7: Volunteer Park Area, Area 8: Beacon Hill and SODO Light Rail Station and Areas 9-12: Mount Baker, Columbia City, Othello, and Rainier Beach.

As someone from Seattle, even though I don't see my neighborhood on that list (Maple Leaf) -- I am extremely excited to see more and more infrastructural focus on SODO and Areas 9-12 getting some much needed improvement. The light rail running through that area has been a step in the right direction for everyone in those neighborhoods, and I'm excited to see that development continue.

Awesome news. Comcast's monopoly on broadband in certain neighborhoods has produced nothing but sub-par internet access. This should greatly improve things.

Yeah, Broadstripe and Centurylink are even worse.

So proud of Seattle on a personal and professional level, across multiple recent advancements.

Cool, which were they? Just wondering.

1) Marriage equality 2) Decriminalization of small quantities pot 3) Amazon's recent innovations in the hardware space 4) MS's recent innovations in the hardware space 5) T-Mobile's finally getting the iPhone

Several others on a more personal, non HN related front. Mostly trivial and entertainment based.

As thrilled as I am that we're doing this, overdue and hopefully done right in the public interest, being about three blocks outside one of the initial service areas stings just a smidge.

Note, Santa Clara has municipal fiber too[1] - It is only 'last mile' (e.g. you have to hook up to a real provider in a santa clara data center) and the per-hookup install costs are... substantial, but the ongoing costs, if I could get several customers on the same physical fiber (I mean, if I signed up a few people in a row on a street) could be competitive with the 100Mpbs down/20Mbps up half a kilobuck comcast cable service, and gigabit or even 10 gigabit (if you are willing to make the setup fees even more... substantial) are realistic.

I'm currently working on a project to light a warehouse in santa clara (and I'm moving prgmr.com, and my massive overcommit of bandwidth to santa clara so I'll have somewhere to get transit) If others are interested in a 'fiber to the condo' type setup, lemme know; as a hosting provider (mostly upload) buying symmetrical links, I'd be pretty happy to have some end-user (mostly download) customers. I'm also willing to show you what I know, if you are trying to do the same thing on your own. (I mostly am interested in the fiber 'cause it's cool, and 'cause it is the next step on the path to learning what I need to know to operate a datacenter... a very long term goal of mine. I don't expect to make much money on the fiber project, as selling 'enterprise connectivity' isn't really my kind of game.)

[1]http://svpfiber.com

I've got a job interview tomorrow for a position in Seattle. I'm now even more motivated.

I am seriously debating why I recently moved from Seattle to SF/Bay... I can't go a week without seeing or hearing something that just rubs it in.

I lived in Seattle for 7.5 years, moved to San Francisco September 2011.

My only regret is not doing so sooner.

Seattle is a wonderful town (and it really is a big town more than a city) full of wonderful, if slightly insular, people. It's beautiful, there's great food, you can hike and kayak if that's your thing.

If you're a developer that doesn't work for Microsoft or Amazon, though, the geek community is definitely lacking. There are plenty of professional nerds but much fewer people working on exciting side projects.

I found it much harder to meet people, nerds or civilians. It's the sort of place where people settle in, where people have grown up, where people aren't necessarily looking for new friends. All of which is fine, I just found it a bit off-putting.

Seattle doesn't really do urban density (granted, SF has plenty of room to grow, literally, here). Some of that is intentional, mostly it's just aggravating. It doesn't seem to want to be a city. Portland, which is smaller, manages to do many of the "city" things (like public transportation and urban planning) much better.

And, man. Don't forget the weather. Those months without the sun age you.

I loved my time and life in Seattle. SF feels more like home, even if I have to wait another year for Sonic.net to roll out fiber.

This neatly summarizes how I feel. Or how I think I feel. Or how I want to feel?

There's no getting over the fact that Seattle isn't Silicon Valley. But, it's become so clear that Seattle isn't as static as it used to be. So even though it's insular now (and always has been), I just have a gut feeling that Seattle will open up and blossom more. Can you imagine a Seattle with SV's good parts, and none of the bad parts? Or is that just inherently impossible because it is Seattle?

In between the legal weed, fast internet, social entrepreneurship community, and it now being the 'it' place to live and play, it's almost a tossup for me. If there were money in Seattle and the funding climate there not being so stingy, maybe I would've stayed.

You're not alone. I left Seattle for SF because the insular unfriendly people literally made me feel depressed so much of the time. I just visited for Thanksgiving and I was amazed how much unhappier Seattlites seem compared to SF people. It felt so good to come back to the bay. I'm from Bellingham and Seattle is the pretty much the only place in Washington that is that unfriendly. Everett, Bham, Olympia, you name it, they're friendlier.

I still cringe a bit at how unhappy I was there.

It's not like you had to renounce your citizenship or anything :) I'm sure you could move back. I know I am seriously considering NV or WA 10+ mo/yr as soon as it makes sense for my business (I've also lived in Seattle).

I'm moving to Seattle in January and was already planning to sign up with CondoInternet. Seeing as my to-be neighborhood is one of those they say this will be offered in, I'm now wondering when this will be rolled out. Awesome news though.

Edit: "Gigabit Squared will be aggressively building, with eyes towards beginning services in the Fall of 2013."

Just a friendly mention that if your would-be neighborhood is Belltown or SLU, you may want to investigate some other options (unless of course you already have, in which case please ignore me!). Belltown has become worse and worse for crime (unless Phoenix Jones happens by to save you from being mugged). SLU, while nice and pristine and new, is now very overpriced due to Amazon's recent relocation there. Both neighborhoods absolutely have their positives as well, but I wouldn't move to them just for CondoInternet. :)

[citation needed] re: Belltown crime.

SLU is a former industrial neighborhood now filled with Amazon offices and cookie-cutter apartments. Basically the positive there is that you're close to work, the neighborhood itself is severely lacking in culture.

Belltown is "dangerous" only for people who have never lived in a city with a real dangerous neighborhood. I have never so much as felt even uncomfortable walking around Belltown alone at night. I can't say the same about most downtowns of other cities I've been in, let alone sketchier neighborhoods.

Maybe I've just been desensitized, but I really feel like there is no cause for alarm in Belltown.

It's relative -- among Seattle hoods, I would (anecdotally and out of my ass, of course) say there is more violent crime there than in others. I'm also a fairly big guy and I've felt uncomfortable plenty of times there at night when the streets are semi-abandoned.

In the past year I've seen ambulances taking away normal citizens who've been beat down (twice) and I've had a stabbing perp run by me as he was chased by the cops. And this is with me almost never going to Belltown. I've never seen anything remotely like that while I lived in First or Capitol Hill (although I've definitely seen plenty of car break-ins).

I just moved from SOMA in SF to Belltown. Feels like Disneyland.

I have worked in or around Belltown for years. My feelings are...mixed. There is a lot of minor urban annoyances. Panhandlers, junkies, drug deals, public urination, etc. I don't feel unsafe (in daylight hours) but it does feel sort of bleak and depressing.

I respect that other people have different tolerances for urban annoyances.

The problem with Belltown isn't so much with crime as its antiseptic feel. Endless highrises with nothing interesting for retail underneath. No supermarket. The coffee shops have no character. On a Sunday morning the streets are barren of people, and even the lone park is cold and uninviting. It's just a classless hunk of neighborhood where bridge and tunnelers drink, and boring people live. I would far prefer to live in Capitol Hill or even Ballard.

"Belltown has become worse and worse for crime"

It really hasn't. I'd be more worried about living in the U-District than Belltown or even the International District.

CondoInternet is awesome :) 100 mbps for $60 a month. Have only had one down time in the past year due to their equipment icing over last winter. We couldn't be happier with the service.

Scheduled to be in by the end of 2014, so don't cancel your internet service just yet. :)

I'm very curious how the "wifi neighborhoods" will be implemented. The neighborhood somehow gets a gigabit wireless connection (which the city's press release erroneously refers to as "wireless fiber"), and clients connect via 802.11n, but what exactly is my 802.11n client connecting to and where is it?

edit: hmmm, from their technical FAQ: "Services will be available to 100,000 residents within 24 months (by year-end 2014)."

If you have the option for condointernet, go for that. By far the best option in Seattle.

Our (government owned) telco is building out an island-wide Gigabit network here in Jersey which is great. Problem is that it is capped at 50GB/month usage, which defeats the purpose. Actually using the connection's full capacity for about 5-6 minutes a month will result in overage charges. I'm hoping Seattle has a more realistic monthly cap, if one exists.

Sign-up page with plan details here: http://www.jtglobal.com/Jersey/Personal/JT-Fibre/Fibre-Tarif...

Oh hell yes. I live in the U District. I am basically first in line for this. Signed up for more info as it happens. Goodbye, Comcast.

Hurrah! I was getting worried about something Google fiber esque taking painfully long to make it here.

I live in SLU! Today is a happy day.

Question: why would a private person (as opposed to a business) need a Gigabit internet access?

Why would you need a terabyte hard drive? Why would you need 8 GB of RAM? Why would you need a Core i7 processor capable of over 80,000 MIPS?

Step back and think about what you do with a computer or mobile device today. Most of what we do involves the Internet. We don't "need" Gigabit internet access any more than we "need" the things above, but when they're present, we're free to find innovative new ways to use them.

It's still a fair question though.

How many streams of retina-quality video do you need to watch (or feed) simultaneously?

I think in 10 years this question will be regarded the same as "who needs a personal computer?" is today. Similar questions were asked about always-on broadband (vs dialup), gigabytes/terabytes of memory/disk, etc. We've been pretty good at finding ways to use whatever tech is thrown at us.

My pet example use case for 1Gbps is my product, Dropcam (shameless plug: http://www.dropcam.com), where we could use that extra bandwidth to provide amazingly higher quality video, support for more cameras per location, and generally do much more cutting edge stuff.

Symmetric 1Gbps means you don't just access the "cloud" anymore ... you become a part of it. Kinda like the original pioneers of the Internet imagined in the first place.

The same reason we need more than 640K of RAM, maybe?

In 5-10 years maybe. Now virtually all sites are slower than a ~ 10-50 mbs connection so having all that extra bandwidth doesn't help you at all. That's the reality.

The Internet is more than the World Wide Web.

For what % of people? We should assume that bigger pipes cost more money, at least they do now, so why should Jack and Jill pay for 1Gig/s when a 5-10-20 mbps is more they need? Cable seems to have no problem bringing movies through the old copper wires.

"We should assume that bigger pipes cost more money"

Why? The cost for running the fiber has already been paid.

"Cable seems to have no problem bringing movies through the old copper wires."

What companies choose to charge for old copper is irrelevant to how much of a profit one can make off of newer cable drops.

"Why? The cost for running the fiber has already been paid."

Not every mile is owned by one company, the internet is a series of tubes

This is true! However costs over the years have plummeted for those uplinks and the reduction in costs have not been passed on to the consumer through much lower priced service.

Need is a strong word so I'll assume you mean want.

1. Households with more than a couple residents who are bandwidth hungry. Ever live in a place where people are trying to use VoIP, stream 1080p videos, download Windows updates, and play online games at the same time? Having experienced this it's the best use case I can think of.

2. Productivity. The faster you can download the 2GB Xcode update the faster you can get back to work.

3. Lower latency is better for gaming. A better connection can give you an advantage over other players.

4. Because people want it.

Because it can be offered, and we've been ripped off by ISPs for quite some time now.

What is a "fiber transmitter"?

Any of a number of different wireless transmitters plugged into fiber.

There are laser transceivers for use in open air, but they don't work particularly well in rain or fog. So not great for Seattle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communicatio...

Most likely a catchphrase to disguise the fact that they are using millimeter or microwave radio links to provide a 1Gbps connection to specific buildings that they can't (yet) reach with fiber.

In all seriousness, what's the likelihood of bootstrapping something like this? Intuitively I'd say near zero, high upfront costs, low profit margins, slow ROI. For some reason though, my gut isn't convinced.

ROI is fine compared to most industries. Don't get jaded by the super-fast ROI examples from the software industry, it's not usual for a company to grow into a billion dollar goliath in less than a decade. For most industries, even telecom, a >10% average annual return is fantastic and will attract plenty of investment and seed capital.

You're much better off figuring out a wireless solution. Building out and maintaining a network of underground cables in an established city just sounds like a nightmare.

I know what you mean, and there has been wireless successful wireless startups so there is a case for it. The big issue though is bandwidth. With ubiquitous wifi hardware (thus cheap), you might be able to push 100Mbps (rough guess, I'm not sure how multi-antenna systems work for the 300 limit, I would assume 1 antenna to a person's house though). Which would be great but you're not going to get it unless you're standing next to the base station. You have to go through thousands of feet of air and then share what's left with everyone else using that AP. How many people would share an AP? Assuming 4 to a tower, easily 100? During peak times of day, I doubt you could get WiFi to deliver speeds that rival current offerings and it may be difficult to even match them (my local WiFi provider just recently broke 15Mbps for their top business tier at a much higher price than local cable).

You also need to physically install and maintain antenna's on everyone's roof (how would this work at apartments?) and hope there's no buildings in line of sight to the tower. Both of which would be highly vulnerable to weather (you put lightning suppressors on those people's antennas and ran a grounding wire to the earth right?).

TL;DR: I don't think wifi is any less of a nightmare (purely hypothesis though, I don't have experience with either in public infrastructure) but we see it more simply because initial cost of deployment is less.

Does anyone worry about increased microwave radiation due to all these beamed broadband Antennas all over?

Hopefully the pricing will be competitive with Google Fiber, and not several times more.

No love for West Seattle? :(

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