When will Seattle get Municipal Broadband?

A Q&A with Upgrade Seattle’s Devin Glaser

“One of the most important issues facing Seattle area in 2018 is bridging a “digital divide” and making the Internet more accessible to more people. I think it became all the more urgent late last year, when the FCC rolled back Obama-era regulations that protected consumers from whatever whims their Internet provider fancied with regard to throttling or censoring whatever website or service they feel like. Internet Service Providers now will have no obligation to protect, or even respect, the privacy of their customers (and there is often very little, if any competition).

One idea that has been gaining more and more momentum over the past few years has been a municipal-owned broadband service that can make Internet service accessible and affordable to their entire community. In Seattle, that effort has been spearheaded by the advocacy group Upgrade Seattle, which describes its mission as being “dedicated to creating a publicly-owned Municipal Broadband utility focused on equity. Private Internet providers have failed to serve every neighborhood in Seattle, and continue to charge unaffordable rates simply because they face no competition. Seattle voters strongly approve of creating a public Internet utility, and we will continue to channel their enthusiasm in order to make their voices heard.”

To learn more about bringing Municipal Broadband to Seattle and what it will take and cost, I asked Upgrade Seattle’s Devin Glaser if he would answer some questions by e-mail. I am quite grateful that he found some time over the holidays to do just that.

I wanted to talk to you about Upgrade Seattle because 2018 looks like it’ll be a pivotal, but challenging year, for your organization, with the FCC repealing net neutrality rules and Mayor Durkan coming into office after saying as a candidate that she didn’t think municipal broadband was a good idea. What plans does Upgrade Seattle have for 2018 to help move Seattle towards municipal broadband?

The FCC’s recent repeal of Net Neutrality certainly adds fuel to our organizing fire, but there was a strong case to be made for building out a public internet utility well before December of 2017. We started organizing together in 2014 motivated by a strong desire to address the digital divide in Seattle (15% of residents lack home internet, most often because of price concerns) and recognizing that we’re all being taken advantage of by the two giant companies currently providing internet in our city. Whether you’re a teen trying to finish a school assignment, or a job seeker hoping to land a new job, we all need internet — and there is no reason for Comcast or CenturyLink to offer us competitive prices or quality connections because they know we’re not going anywhere else.

Municipal broadband gives us somewhere else to go.

We still have some work to convince Durkan, but even throughout her campaign she softened her tone on municipal broadband — going from outright opposition in the primary to a somewhat lackluster “I support it but don’t want to fund it” in the general election. And we’ve seen some strong speeches from Durkan opposing the FCC’s repeal of Net Neutrality provisions. So we’re optimistic there is room to work with her moving forward.

Beyond the mayor, we’ve been slowly gaining support on the City Council in a manner that’s truly exciting. Since 2015, we’ve been replacing council candidates in opposition to municipal broadband with candidates who see the true value of a public utility — last year alone we swapped out Councilmember Burgess, who wasn’t a fan, with Councilmember Mosqueda, who completely rocks and put municipal broadband in her platform early on. There’s room to work with council to introduce either a piecemeal or citywide project in the coming year.

I literally couldn’t name a single person I know that would call themselves a satisfied Comcast customer, CenturyLink has apologized for lying about their service, and voters in Fort Collins, CO just voted in favor of municipal broadband in November, so it seems there’s a groundswell of interest in it and the timing is right, but it still seems very hard to enact because of spending and lobbying from telecom companies appears limitless. What are steps that need to be taken to get around the telecom companies and enact this?

Getting money out of politics would be a huge boon to our organizing, but as we’ve seen in Fort Collins, even with unlimited spending, Comcast and CenturyLink still don’t have a particularly appealing message.

Telecoms spent $900,000 telling voters that the city wasn’t in a position to build out a public internet utility and that it was a “waste of limited public dollars” (a message we’ve heard and will hear again in Seattle). Voters didn’t believe them. Advocates just like Upgrade Seattle spent $15,000 and they won — because the message is clear. Local control of the internet is essential because the internet is a public good.

Does the FCC’s votes against net neutrality, in your opinion, make moving towards municipal broadband more or less possible in the near and distant future?

We’ve always seen municipal broadband as inevitable, and this is definitely energizing people. What’s scary is imagining the potential election abuses we could see in the future without Net Neutrality protections. This last election telecoms spent over $50,000 to support their preferred candidate. In 2019 or 2021, your internet service provider could limit or block access to a candidate’s website if they disagreed with their platform. That’s terrifying.

Lucky for us we’ve been grassroots organizing for years, and there’ll be lots of ways to ensure that candidates who support municipal broadband continue to get local and national attention.

I watched one of the mayoral debates in-person, and there, Jenny Durkan talked about making Comcast and CenturyLink more accessible to low-income families, but said that she didn’t think municipal broadband was the way to go. Why do you think this approach is insufficient?

Comcast and CenturyLink’s low-income programs are a joke. Comcast makes a family disconnect their service for 3 months before they are even eligible — which is just cruel. Can you imagine going without internet service for 3 months just to get more affordable access? They also limit the number of IP addresses that can go online at a time, or offer service so slow it should be considered dial-up.

Ultimately, we can’t address the digital divide by giving low-income people an intentionally downgraded internet experience, while allowing people able to afford the current exorbitant rates, normal speeds. That just further continues inequities. We’re all better off when we’re all better off, and there is no clearer example of this than municipal broadband.

Seattle tried something in 2013, with a public/private partnership with Gigabit Squared and Mayor McGinn, but that didn’t seem to work out when the tech company couldn’t secure the funding to build out the necessary infrastructure. What must be done now to avoid the same challenges from 5 years ago?

First off, avoid public-private partnerships. There’s simply no reason to add a third party to the mix when providing internet — but too often elected officials like to hide the cost of a project by using a third party provider. Third parties raise the cost of doing business because they’re effectively middle men, extracting money from Seattle residents on both ends.

After that? We got to keep up the pressure everyday. McGinn ran for office in 2009 with municipal broadband in his platform, but once he got elected, it was really easy to lose momentum. Comcast’s lobbyists are down there day in and day out, and if there’s no grassroots energy raising hell on the outside, it’s easy to get stalled out in the Seattle Process. And then in 2013 Comcast funded his opponent and that put a big halt to his efforts. They knew what they were doing, and we can’t let that happen again.

What cities provide examples of what you want to enact in Seattle w/r/t public-owned broadband? Chattanooga? Tacoma?

In the 2015 State of the Union, Obama put up a YouTube video showcasing cities with the fastest downloads in the world. He lists off Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, and then Cedar Falls, IA. Kansas City, MO. Chattanooga, TN. Each was a municipal network. That same year the Stranger put together a piece on Sandy, OR — another local town with their own municipal fiber network.

There are nearly 100 cities that have already done this and they’ve seen dramatically increased speeds and lowered prices for their residents. The only thing that sets Seattle apart from these cities is our size. In a market like ours, Comcast is projected to lose up to $84 million a year in profits if residents were to finally have an alternative. Big ISPs are terrified of the example Seattle would set by building out a public utility. So we need to be ready for the political fight to come.

One thing I hear a lot from skeptics is “it’s too expensive!” Realistically, how much do you think it would cost the city to enact municipal broadband? How much would it cost consumers? What other benchmarks need to happen to achieve this?

Well, first off building out a citywide network is expensive. In fact, it’s because it’s so expensive that we need government intervention. In a competitive market where anyone can throw up a lemonade stand and sell lemonade, competition brings down the price of a product until it’s sold at or near cost. But with utilities, that up-front cost is what prevents competition. The private market simply can’t offer a competitive price in any situation where there’s a large up-front cost keeping out new providers.

But when it comes to public money? It’s actually incredibly cheap. Seattle can build out a full citywide internet utility for less than half the price of the Move Seattle Levy. Really large price tags get really cheap when we all chip in together. Even better, with municipal broadband, Seattle is no longer sending hundreds of millions of dollars out of state each year to Comcast and CenturyLink. That money stays local, going back into the Seattle utility and the local employees who staff it.

What can we do to help get this put into law? Call city councilmembers? Give money to Upgrade Seattle?

Certainly people can donate to Upgrade Seattle. Currently we’re fundraising to expand our reach in the coming year — we’re an all-volunteer organization so donations go a long way. As we saw in the Fort Collins example, $15,000 in grassroots organizing can beat out $900,000 in big ISP spending.

Beyond money, constantly keeping up the pressure on our elected officials is key. Each of your readers has three councilmembers, two at large and one district representative who need to hear why Seattle residents support municipal broadband. Whether that’s concerns over Net Neutrality, bad Comcast Customer Service experiences, concerns about price, concerns about equity, tell ‘em! The more public pressure we create, the better. Once they’re done contacting their three councilmembers, call up the mayor and have that same conversation.

We’ll be keeping people apprised of ways to get involved as they come up over the next few months. People who want municipal broadband in Seattle should join our mailing list or follow us on social media. Our tweet game is on fleek and all our Facebook friends love us.

And by all means, thanks for reaching out. We think we’ve got an interesting story to tell, and we’re happy to tell it to anyone who’ll listen.