Seattle is the latest local government taking steps to protect citizens’ data. As of May 24th, companies with franchise agreements allowing them to operate in the city must obtain customer permission to sell personal data or browsing histories.

The three companies operating in Seattle are Comcast, CenturyLink and Wave Broadband.

Opting In vs. Opting Out

In Seattle, the rule will require customers to opt-in to allow companies to collect and sell their data, unlike the usual situation - opting out to refrain. 

“We felt that an opt-out process was insufficient,” said Michael Mattmiller, the city’s chief technology officer. “Consumers are too busy to somehow learn through the fine print that your web usage is being mined or sold.”

To remain in compliance with the new rule, companies must submit semi-annual reports. 

State Efforts Uncertain

The state is still considering passing a similar bill but Seattle isn’t waiting for Olympia to act first. Minnesota’s privacy protection amendment was removed from the omnibus jobs bill in conference committee and faces an uncertain future; acting at the municipal level appears to be most likely to stick.

Tacoma's City Council passed a resolution in April to heighten personal data privacy on the publicly owned Click! network.

Read Seattle's new rule for Internet service providers here.

Seattle hasn’t given up the possibility of fast, affordable, reliable connectivity for all.

The city has long struggled with how to improve Internet access for residents and businesses. They commissioned a feasibility study in 2015 to learn more about the cost and potential for a citywide broadband utility, but the hefty estimated cost - $480 million to $665 million - subdued the conversation. The City Council, however, is taking steps to ensure the city doesn’t lose site of the idea of Internet access as a utility.

Keeping The Dream Alive

Council Member Rob Johnson introduced an amendment to the Mayor’s Comprehensive Master Plan to keep the concept of ubiquitous high-quality connectivity in the city’s future. Johnson’s amendment, which passed at a September City Council meeting, added Municipal Broadband to the list of potential future discretionary projects in the Mayor’s Comprehensive Master Plan. The plan addresses the city’s long-term growth vision. 

The fiscal analysis, or Green Sheet, puts the price tag at $303,000 in 2017 and $137,000 in 2018. The funding would cover the cost of a full-time staff person in the city’s IT department and the cost to develop a business plan for a city-owned municipal broadband utility. The funding did not make it into the final budget, but with municipal broadband in the Master Plan, a future budget may see the addition.

Next Century Cities (NCC) is hosting Digital Northwest: A Broadband Summit for Regional Broadband Leaders at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, Washington. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is co-hosting the event.

The summit will bring together federal, state, and local officials, industry representatives, and community leaders to celebrate successes and share resources. The summit will examine gaps that remain and strategize on how to expand high-speed Internet access.

After a welcome reception in the evening of Sunday, March 20th, there will be a daylong summit on Monday, March 21st featuring workshops on a variety of topics ranging from rural Internet access to the digital economy. 

Conference attendees are invited to stay a little longer. In the morning of Tuesday, March 22nd, government officials, industry representatives, and other experts will be on hand to answer questions in an “office hours” session.

What: Digital Northwest: A Broadband Summit for Regional Broadband Leaders 

Where: Bell Harbor International Conference Center, Seattle, Washington, 98121. 

When: March 20-21, 2016 (optional: the morning of March 22, 2016)

Register online for the summit.

With the release of the city of Seattle's community broadband feasibility study, media outlets turned to ILSR and our own Christopher Mitchell for context, and to help uncover what can be done to help improve connectivity for all Seattleites. 

The same week, Christopher was invited to the city by Upgrade Seattle to help launch their initiative. Below are some selected publicity highlights from Seattle. 

KUOW's "The Record" with Ross Reynolds. How can Seattle get affordable broadband Internet  

KEXP's "Mind Over Matters" with Mike McCormick. Video is below. "What is Seattle's Next Step?" You can also listen to the Audio version here.

GovTech: Colin Wood interviewed Chris for his June 12 article Muni Broadband Goes Mainstream.

“You don’t just want better Internet access,” Mitchell said. “You want to know for whom and at what cost. Is your problem connecting low-income populations? That requires different thinking than if you’re just trying to attract some high-tech businesses to your town.”

CrossCut.com: Amelia Havenec covered the lunch & learn conversation between Chris and Upgrade Seattle organizer Hollis Wong-Wear. Following setbacks, municipal broadband supporters continue urging action

“The focus should be on the people who are not connected, the people who are left behind,” Mitchell responded. “Low income people pay $10 a month for Comcast. But you can only connect one device per household. To make sure everybody has a basic connection at home, there’s a $5 million budget to bring one-gigabit, fiber-to-the-premises internet access to tens of thousands of single-family homes in Beacon Hill, Central District, and Queen Anne. With all the transportation planning right now, it’s a good time to identify a fiber conduit in the ground.”

As the talk of municipal broadband grows louder in Seattle, city leaders are gathering to learn more about what deploying at a fiber network may entail. On May 13th, the Seattle Energy Committee and leaders from citizen group Upgrade Seattle met to discuss the needs, challenges, and possibilities. Chris joined them via Skype to provide general information and answer questions. He was in Atlanta at the time of the meeting. Video of the entire meeting is now available via the Seattle Channel and embedded below.

King5 also covered the meeting (video below). 

"We're starting from a different place in terms of the infrastructure," said Karen Toering with Upgrade Seattle. "The city already has in place hundreds of miles of dark fiber that we're not even using right now that were already laid in the years previous to now."

Upgrade Seattle sees that dark fiber as the key to competition which will lead to better consumer prices and service from private providers. 

Businesses are also interested in reliability, argues Upgrade Seattle. Devin Glaser told the committee:

"It's important to have double redundancies – to have two wires connecting everything – so one accidental cut doesn't take out the entire grid," Glaser said. "So anything we have at the city level would value our productivity rather than their profits."

You can watch the discussion below. The conversation on a municipal fiber network lasts about about an hour. Chris begins his presentation around 11:00 into the video. As a warning, there is a significant amount of profane language at the beginning of the video from one of the public commentors.

The Editorial Board of the Seattle Times wants Mayor Ed Murray and his administration to put affordability and ubiquitous access near the top of the list as it considers a municipal fiber network. In a May 7th editorial, the Board acknowledged that Internet access in the City is available, but apparently not at affordable rates for everyone. 

One of the next topics for Seattle Mayor Ed Murray to address is whether taxpayers in Software City should support a new broadband network.

...

But any attempt to create the broadband equivalent of Seattle City Light should be planned from the start as a citywide service, providing the same quality to everyone in the jurisdiction.

...

Rates for city broadband must be kept low enough to be accessible and appealing. This would be a challenge for a city that’s found ways to load utility bills.

A city broadband network may be worthwhile if it offers something unique and of great public value. Leveling the playing field and providing top quality service to everyone would meet this criteria.

Read the full editorial here!

There are probably more mesh Wi-Fi networks operating in the U.S. than most of us realize. They require only one hard-wired connection to the Internet and there are many industrious, tech minded people out there who have the skills to set up this self-healing technology, though they are still working out the kinks.

A mesh network allows devices to engage each other without going through a central point. If I want to use my cell phone to call the cell phone of someone standing 10 feet away from me, the signal may travel thousands of times farther than it would have to because a cell phone company wants to track minutes, collect data, and more. In a mesh network, the two devices would just talk to each other without intermediation. 

A recent Technical.ly article, explores a dozen communities that are using the technology to serve local residents.

The article provides some basic info on these local mesh networks:

• Redhook Wifi, Brooklyn
• Bamboowifi, Philadelphia
• SMesh, Baltimore
• Meta Mesh, Pittsburgh
• Digital Stewards, Detroit
• NYCWireless, New York City
• Personal Telco, Portland, Oregon
• MileMesh, Hoboken, N.J.
• Wasabinet, St. Louis
• TFA Wireless, Houston
• Meshnet Project, Seattle
• La Canada Wireless Association (LCWA, Santa Fe)

We have reported on mesh networks in Poulsbo, Washington, and Ponca City, Oklahoma. An attractive feature for those communities was the ability to expand the network as needed with modest investment. As Technical.ly reports:

Seattleites tired of waiting for incumbents to provide better services, have decided to launch a campaign to establish Internet access as a public utility. In order to get the campaign off to a strong start, the founding group has launched a survey to choose a name.

Seattle has significant fiber resources in place, an electric utility, and strong grassroots support. Unfortunately, incumbent Comcast has been trying to curry favor within City Hall. But given that Seattle has joined Next Century Cities, the City seems focused on exploring all of its options.

When Chris presented in Seattle, he strongly encouraged them to organize a grassroots effort to support a community network. Now, a group of community organizers, artists, tech workers, and students are taking the next step forward because:

A 2014 report by the city found that "nearly 20% of Seattle residents do not have any Internet access.” Entire neighborhoods still lack access to Internet speeds necessary to take part in the modern economy. Without access, residents may not be able to apply for jobs, utilize city websites, finish their homework, operate a small business, display art, shop online, or video chat with a doctor from the comfort of their homes.    

Even those with home access to Internet have too few options. The same city report showed that 45% of residents wanted better prices, and 33% wanted higher speeds than currently offered by the two dominant Internet providers: Comcast and CenturyLink.  

Some of the names they suggest are "Seattle for Homegrown Internet," "Connecting Seattle," and "Seattle's Own Internet." They also offer the chance for participants to offer their own ideas.

This week in community broadband, more communities are adding broadband to the list of essential utilities, and many of them are turning to Chattanooga as a model “gig city.”

As Times Free Press’s Dave Flessner reports, the great thing about Chattanooga's approach is that it’s not just about Internet. In fact, the broadband boom is really an unintended benefit of the city’s cutting edge smart grid, which keeps the city’s lights on and powers the economy as well. 

"What we're going to try to do is bring some of the brilliant people from Warner Bros., Fox, Disney and IBM down here to Chattanooga to help them get their heads wrapped around this notion that you've got to stop worrying about scarcity," [Annenberg Innovation Lab director Jonathan] Taplan said.

Last year, T-Bone Burnett, a Grammy Award winner, performed "The Wild Side of Life" from a Los Angeles studio with Chuck Mead, a founder of the band BR549 who was on stage in Chattanooga.

"They sang a song together over 2,000 miles apart," Taplin said. "That's the power of gigabit Internet. I think we're just beginning to think of the possibilities of what this thing can do."

And Android Authority’s William Neilson Jr. explores the desire for faster connections and more choices.

“Isn’t it amazing how much faster broadband speeds are in parts of the country where there are a number of broadband options available to residents? How many times am I going to write an article detailing a broadband provider telling a city that they don’t need “fast” speeds even though the city is universally angry at their lack of broadband options?”

Of course, we see the product of how increased competition brings better service even more clearly in communities that have municipal networks, not just in Google's Kansas City network. It is an outcome that all communities can achieve if they regain the authority to do so.