Seattle can’t be everything to everyone, as many who can’t afford to live in the city are quickly learning. But that hasn’t stopped the city from considering whether to be one of the few U.S. municipalities to have a broadband utility.
Upgrade Seattle, which will launch its formal campaign for a city-owned and -operated broadband on Thursday, June 18, sees Internet utilities as “inevitable,” according to its response to a recently released feasibility study’s findings, but now isn’t the time for it to happen.
While “broadband Internet service is a necessity in the 21st century” that many don’t have “equal access” to, according to city Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller, it’s not as important as, say, clean air and water, food and shelter — which a good enough proportion of Seattleites still don’t have regular access to.
Making Internet access more affordable and available would be enviable, especially for the thousands of techies in Seattle. Yet, every resident would need to first be able to afford the costs of smartphones and other electronic devices that can access it. The Internet is readily accessible for free at many places, including the public libraries, which even offers usage at a limited number of computers, and numerous businesses throughout the city.
At a time when the city is putting forth a $930 million transportation levy that doesn’t include many major roadway projects, like repairing bridges, the expense to build a broadband network infrastructure — which the feasibility study estimates to be between $480 million and $665 million — is too high a price for one project.
The city would also need to compete for customers with existing companies that have near-perfected their capabilities and services and are just replicating them in different markets.
Upgrade Seattle founder Sabrina Roach estimated in a statement that Comcast probably collects $20 million each month from its subscribers, but there is no certainty that the city will collect anywhere near that amount to operate a start-up broadband utility. Even Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the country, claims that video generates more revenue than broadband service, according to a story in The New York Times. The city simply doesn’t have the time, ability or resources to test a beta version at the pace of Seattle process.
City officials need to decide whether trying to somehow take hundreds of millions of dollars in subscriber fees and, eventually, tax dollars from the General Fund is more viable than “competing priorities,” as City Budget Office director Ben Noble noted in his review memo of the feasibility study.
Less money could be better spent to make cable and subsequently broadband service more affordable, now that the Federal Communications Commission has recently ruled to allow Comcast and other cable providers to raise rates at will.
This is one time the city should choose to disconnect from the wireless world.