By Ron Thaniel
May 30, 2011

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced on May 23 a new initiative to bring high'speed and high-capacity fiber broadband to Pioneer Square, Seattle’s oldest neighborhood. This initiative will allow businesses to get much more bandwidth than is available to them today, at speeds up to 100 times faster than is currently available. Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer joined McGinn in the announcement.

“Businesses have told us the Internet service available to them in Pioneer Square is ‘barely adequate,” said McGinn. “Today we are one step closer to bringing them the extremely fast Internet service they need to compete in the global economy.”

Seattle published a Request for Proposals (RFP) for Internet service providers to lease space in conduit that Seattle City Light, a publicly owned utility, and the Seattle Department of Information Technology are laying as part of a separate project under First Avenue. The conduit enables fiber optic cable to be pulled through it, allowing nearby businesses to connect to high'speed fiber broadband.

“This is something we have needed and is coming at the right time, just as new economy firms are filling up Pioneer Square office space,” said Royer.

Under the terms of the RFP, Internet service providers will be able to pull fiber through the city’s conduit and serve neighboring buildings. Neighboring business can then negotiate with Internet service providers to determine bandwidth and speeds. Fiber optic cable has much higher bandwidth than most of the existing infrastructure, and can handle both extremely high download and upload speeds. Copper and coaxial cable physically limit the amount of data—and business—that can travel over them.

McGinn said he hopes to expand this service across the city. “This is really the infrastructure of the future. In order to be competitive on a global scale — with cities around the world — we’re going to need to start making these investments now,” he said.

The city expects two or three Internet service providers to submit proposals. Fiber broadband service should be available to customers along First Avenue by September of this year.