Peter Orne Wireless Government Subscribe to Newsletter Tell a Friend Print this Page 09/28/2006 Seattle CTO: Broadband Plan Puts Fiber First While many local governments are view broadband-wireless infrastructure as an emerging solution for better city management and social and economic development for their communities, the City of Seattle, which is already rich in Wi-Fi connectivity, has put fiber at the center of its broadband planning. At the W2i Broadband-Wireless Local Stakeholders Briefing Session in Seattle, September 13, 2006, IT Director and Chief Technology Officer Bill Schrier gave a keynote address called “Busting the Myths: Wi-Fi, Broadband and Cities,” adapted below for The W2i Report. Mr. Schrier poked holes through the “hype” surrounding citywide Wi-Fi networks and elaborated extensively on the findings of Seattle’s Citizens Task Force to explore how the city’s assets could be used to create a broadband network. He said that one reason the Task Force didn’t look at doing citywide Wi-Fi is because Seattle already has a lot of Wi-Fi access points. The focus on fiber is linked to expected growth projections for the city over the next 40 years: “If you’ve got fiber and cable to every home and business, you can pop up Wi-Fi hotspots virtually wherever you want, and you can create that wireless cloud around the city relatively quickly. So that’s one reason we’re concentrating on fiber first, even though Wi-Fi or mobile access is also important.” I’m going to go through what we consider to be the steps to broadband. It could be wireless, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, fiber to the home — it could be a lot of things. You’ve heard that the FCC has a definition broadband as 256 kbps. If that works for you as broadband, then you don’t need to implement Wi-Fi or anything else, because you’ve basically got it with dial-up and cable modems. But…! Here’s what I consider to be the steps to broadband: clarify objectives, assess the competition, assess assets and market, get elected officials’ decision and support, and pursue the goal. But remember while you’re doing all this, technology marches on, and the technology is changing out from under you. A Fable It’s 1890 in Seattle, population 42,000. The projection for 1930 is 360,000, or a tenfold increase in 40 years. You’re the urban planner. What are you going to do? The plan for Seattle in 1890 is a horse transportation infrastructure. It’s before the automobile was invented, so we’ve got to plan for 360,000 people worth of horses for transportation. You’ve got to have wood for carriages and watering troughs, as well as cow pastures and horse farms. You need cows for leather, water troughs and water delivery, and a road to Ellensburg, 100 miles, for hay to feed the horses. You’ll need grooms, stable hands, buggy makers. And, of course, horse byproduct management! It effects quality of life if you don’t manage it right. But it’s not 1890, it’s 2006 here in Seattle, and we’re the “tech capital of the world.” (Of course, it’s not Seattle, but Redmond.) And our cool factor is off the charts, in terms of great quality of life. Anybody who grew up in New York or the South, there are great cities, but the climate can be awful. Our population today is 575,000, with 3 million in the region. But the projection for 2040 is almost a million people in Seattle and 4.6 million in the region. The Puget Sound Council of Governments made the projection, and Mayor Nichols said we need to plan, for 925,000 people in Seattle. Are we going to expand the borders? No, so that means putting another 250,000 people someplace in Seattle. If you see the condos and apartment buildings going up, you can see part of what’s happening. How do we accommodate this growth and still be cool in 40 years? What changes in infrastructure do we need? The viaduct on the waterfront is a huge debate. Should we spend $4 billion to replace this with a tunnel, or $3 billion to replace it with a bridge? And that’s just one piece of infrastructure. So, the first thing we need to do is clarify our objectives. Clarify Objectives So, all the cities are getting free Wi-Fi, and we’re getting left behind. There’s hype around Wi-Fi: “Gee whiz, the City of [Blank] is getting citywide Wi-Fi!” Well, are our circumstances in Seattle, or Bellevue, or Redmond, or Everett, the same as the City of [Blank]? “Low-cost Internet access is important to our city!” Okay, that’s fine, but how about cable, two-way video, telephone, or HDTV? Two-way video, you ask? It will be possible in the future if the bandwidth is there. “It will be free!” But who pays for the 30 APs you’ve got to put up on every square mile. Sixty square miles, 1,800 APs — at what, $10,000 apiece? Internet access might be free, but somebody’s got to pay for that infrastructure. “It will bridge the digital divide for all citizens.” I really like this one. You’re going to bridge the digital divide with free Wi-Fi, but don’t you need a computer to get on the Internet, and a Wi-Fi modem, and maybe some signal? How do we get computers to all these people who are not participating in the Internet economy? So this is the latest hot technology that is understandable to elected officials — along with things like PCs, cell phones, e-mail, dot-com, and Web. It doesn’t mean it’s not the right technology, it just means you have to apply some thought to it. Seattle Task Force Seattle commissioned a Citizens Task Force in 2004 to explore how the city’s assets could be used to create a broadband network. Councilmember Jim Compton, who’s no longer on the city council, pushed this through the Council, and Mayor Greg Nickels concurred. And it included people from the community and private sector to actually consider what we should do. Over 7 months and 13 meetings, the Task Force clarified what it was trying to do with low-cost wireless: Consumers – triple-play, interactive gaming, two-way television, work/business at home Bridging the Digital Divide Economic Development – small businesses, spin-offs, collaboration, educated workforce Public Safety – mobile, video, images Public Purpose – government services, interaction with elected officials, education Certainly, one problem we’ve got in Seattle is that we elect city councils and mayors, and they want to have input from citizens. We hold a meeting and people drive downtown to attend and line up to speak for three minutes. Councilman Compton wanted to improve the government process through better interaction with citizens. The Task Force summarized “technology fit”: DSL – short term, short cable, short life Cable – seems on top now, won’t support future two way HDTV applications Wi-Fi – interesting for mobile, not for TV, video, interference, expensive in wide area Wi-Max – new, may work for mobile, wide area Fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) – the real solution, expensive, 40+ year life with new electronics It also created a results statement: “Within a decade, all of Seattle will have affordable access to an interactive, open broadband network capable of supporting applications and services using integrated layers of voice, video and data with sufficient capacity to meet the ongoing information, communication and entertainment needs of the city’s citizens, businesses, institutions and municipal government.” It set a vision for this city to accomplish over the next ten years to stay current and keep our cool factor with economic development. Assess the Competition The Task Force looked at what was going on in the Seattle area. Like most areas of the country, we basically have a duopoly: a cable and a telephone company that provide most of the telecommunications in the area to residents and businesses. Qwest is not financially able to compete; they’ve got double-digit debt. The cable company, Comcast, because it doesn’t have any competition, is not going to innovate here. If Comcast is going to innovate, it’s going to go where competition is pushing them. In terms of the telecom companies, this is what we find. Verizon is very aggressive. The CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, has got a vision. Wall Street is punishing him for it, but he’s got a long-term vision. Three million home passed with FTTH last year in existing cities, with three million more in 2006. Mayor Graham Richards of Fort Wayne, Inidiana, saw what was going on in his community and went after Verizon and said: You come to my town and I’ll work with you; I’ll help you find people to build this thing out. We’ll tear down every roadblock. So, Verizon brought FTTH to Fort Wayne, but they’re also the incumbent there. But, like I say, Wall Street isn’t convinced. AT&T has a different philosophy — fiber to the curb, not to the home. There are plenty of things going on with WiMAX. Sprint Nextel will use it in its next-gen network. Assets and Market That’s the competition, but how about assets and market? Tech savvy population – Microsoft, Amazon, etc. 51% of adults college graduates 83% households with home computers 81% of employed have access at work 76% have Internet access at home 60% with home Internet have DSL or cable Most literate and Internet literate city; Intel: Seattle is most “unwired” city Forbes: No. 3 in terms of being wired or Internet ready (August 2006). Here’s a Seattle Wi-Fi 2003 map. One reason the Task Force didn’t look at doing citywide Wi-Fi is because we already have a lot of Wi-Fi access points. City of Seattle Market 314,000 premises and units Revenue per residential user in 2005: $43 voice, $48 video, $22 data Revenue per business user: $252 voice, $213 long distance, $147 data Take rate: 12% year one, 43% year 8 City of Seattle Assets (Here are more assets that the city brings to the fray): 320 fiber-miles (over 24,000 strand miles) of fiber throughout the city – public partnership 100,000 utility poles. The city owns the electric utility and the polls. Under the state accountancy act, if we use those poles for any purpose, Seattle City Light has to be compensated for that, but still it means we’ve got a tremendous asset here in the ability to get on the poles. Rights-of-way, street lights, facilities Fast-track permitting Relationships with schools, universities, community organizations Seattle Fiber Network: Get Elected Officials Decision and Support At least one councilmember that we presently have looks at City Light and sees how a broadband utility — fiber-optic network, citywide Wi-Fi, high-speed broadband to homes — could be the same in the twenty-first century as City Light was in the twentieth. But we’ve got a lot of needs — public safety, earthquake, transportation infrastructure, water. A lot of different things are competing for the public dollar. Pursue the Goal We’ve done a detailed study of the potential market. Dynamic Cities helped us develop this. We’ve issued an RFI looking to build a fiber-to-the-premise network. We’re going to try to determine what incentive private partners need to invest here. Because we’ve got all these competing needs for public dollars, elected officials want to invest as little as possible in a broadband utility. I’d love to change that…but there are competing priorities…. Hopefully, we can develop a franchise — one or more partnerships — to do FTTH or FTTP in the city. This is what the Task Force came up with: fiber-optic to every home and business; provision it to allow multiple competing TV, video, telephone and data and Internet services. network neutrality: Hopefully, this is a network that will be important to content providers, because you know that if the network is controlled by a Comcast or Verizon, they could actually charge a Microsoft or a Google dollars to speed their content to homes and businesses, when the infrastructure is controlled by a single company, so network neutrality is important. partner with private vendors and others to construct and operate: This could be a hard thing to get, because typically if somebody’s going to spend all the dollars to build out a service, they’re going to expect some exclusivity so that they can recoup that investment. Now, how about Wi-Fi in all this? If you’ve got fiber and cable to every home and business, you can pop up Wi-Fi hotspots virtually wherever you want, and you can create that wireless cloud around the city relatively quickly. So that’s one reason we’re concentrating on fiber first, even though Wi-Fi or mobile access is also important. Killer Apps What are this century’s killer apps? Games: What’s the killer app for high-speed access? We talk about TV, Internet access — but it’s probably games. Videoconferencing and telecommuting: If you’ve got two-way HDTV at 6 mbps you can telecommute and see your coworkers. You can see the facial expressions and nuances you can’t get a lower video speed. Education and healthcare: How many times do we send people to sit in a class with 500 other students? Think of the stress on the transportation infrastructure. A student could sit at home and get the same benefit from that lecture. Healthcare: How many times do you go to the doctor just to describe your symptoms or maybe they take a blood-pressure test. Again, it’s something that could potentially be done from home. Enhanced safety and improved life for seniors: I’ve got an 81-year-old dad in Iowa. I hate calling him on the phone…but if I could see him, wouldn’t it be a better experience for him and for me? Think of the improved quality of life. Reducing trips and transportation: Multiple HDTV streams per home. I think these are the 21st-century’s killer apps. back Related Items: • Minnesota, Get Broadband Program • Thanks to Verizon, U.S. in Top 10 in Global FTTH Push • 'City-scale' Means A Whole Lot More Than Infrastructure Comments No records were found. Post new comment: Only registered users can add comments. Please Log-in

• MORE BLOGS