Had McGinn heeded UPTUN at the time and taken care of this on his watch, we might be a little further along.

I know Comcast is the Spawn of Satan, but is CenturyLink really a great company and/or internet provider? Am I missing something? It seems like this is just classic government deregulation to support corporate profit. Where is the evidence that this will benefit Seattle consumers?

80 dollars a month, for gigabit? or for "broadband"? if this is just their way of raising prices and controlling the duopoly what is the point?

MUNICIPAL FUCKING BRAODBAND you goddamn beady eyed corporate sleezeballs. MUNI, as in not making a bunch of execs rich, making the fucking service affordable. Fuck.

@4, you may find this helpful: http://www.uptun.org/news/

@6 that doesn't answer anything.

Why does centurylink need to blight our city with utility boxes for fiber to the home?? The whole point is not needing those boxes. This is another scam.

"one that could push competitors like Comcast to stop raising prices without significantly increasing Internet speeds."

Wishful thinking. "Market-will-solve" thinking.

Who wouldn't want one of these beautiful cabinets set up on one a planting strip nearby?

If the cabinet isn't ugly enough they are a graffiti magnet. Comcast recently installed a couple of these things after cutting down a protected tree and destroying some professional landscaping at the end of a green street. I complained and they were fined but there was no going back. They probably thought fair trade for not going to the trouble of putting it on abutting personal property.
If all that isn't bad enough at least a couple times a week, there is Comcast in front of their cabinents doing who knows what for hours. No, I don't need all this drama in front of my house.

If one of those cabinets gave me 20X the broadband speed I'm getting today, I'd welcome it with open arms. They are smaller than the utility boxes the City puts on every signalized street intersection. They can be decorated or landscaped to be more attractive.

The biggest problem with the current rule is that property owners who don't respond to the approval request are not counted as abstaining, they are counted as Opposed! The absentee property owner in Pasadena who doesn't open her mail? She's counted as Opposed to the box in her neighborhood. Stupid; they only place in City government where an abstention is counted as opposition.

I don't think a $700 contribution buys a candidate, but your paranoia is not surprising.

If what the former CTO is saying is true ($800 million cost) then I guess I understand why they're not doing muni broadband right now, but I'd rather they commit resources to figuring out how to get it done than coming up with band-aid private sector partnership solutions. The idea that this will mitigate costs to consumers is utterly naive.

So, what are they proposing changing the SDOT Director's rule to ?

Surely The Stranger has deep connections to the Murray administration that you haven't burned yet, right ?

The proposed legislation to replace the director’s rule is the result of several months of stakeholder meetings that included representatives from communication service providers, City departments, the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board, the Citizens Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board, the Public Space Management Taskforce, Upping Technology in Underserved Neighborhoods, and the Beacon Hill Community Council. - See more at: http://murray.seattle.gov/mayor-murrays-…

@10 Oh Christ, there are Comcast employees working on a Comcast cabinet for hours at a time? Holy shit you're right, that's so much drama! How do you even deal with it? I just can't imagine what a hardship it is for you! Your property values must be tanking! The horror!

The actual cost of the service will be $150+ if you get only gigabit broadband from CenturyLink.

150 is outrageous. Coupled with a crazy high cost of living and rising rent.
Just because you can charge that much, doesn't mean you should.

This is entirely fucking useless. Excuse my harsh language but Centurylink is a piece of shit company that has a fucking cap on their internet at 250GB and then you get shut off. I live in a house with multiple roommates and we all use the internet, and every single one of us needs at least 250GB. The biggest problem I had with centurylink is that they shut off the internet entirely at 250GB and then you get no internet until the next billing cycle. That's one of the most unacceptable policies I've ever heard of, and they shouldn't even be considered an ISP with that bullshit. Fuck them. Fuck their needing to lower regulations. This should have come with the stipulation that they remove this useless cap but of course Murry is more interested in supporting his donors than actually giving a fuck about the internet in this city. Currently my only "choice" for internet is Comcast simply because I use the freaking internet and they aren't enforcing their cap anymore, at least not in this market. Centurylink is a company living in the 20 years ago where 250GB would actually be too much data for a network to handle. It's 2014, the idea that their network needs to shut off customers who use 251GB makes them less than useless, and not actually an ISP, to my needs of an internet company.

Yeah, let's see more cabinets that are as big as a refrigerator all over the place. Should be good for property values too!

@11: More like getting ugly tagged with graffiti.

The right of way rule has to be eased, if you dont then good luck at getting municipal fiber service. You think the city is immune to the rules they set for private companies? Nope.

Just look at Portland, they removed that rule and now they're getting Google Fiber.

Centurylink is Comcast with a charming southern accent. Murray told he was committed to a municipal plan - now do it and quit your lolli-gagging. Next...municipal cable - although I think cable is on the downhill slide to extinction.

The idea that Seattle has to choose between doing nothing or investing $800 million is false. There are many different possible approaches, but the question is whether it will challenge the very powerful interests represented by CenturyLink and Comcast. Unlike Portland, Google appears to have zero interest in investing in Seattle - thanks to Amazon and Microsoft, no doubt. Anyone who thinks CenturyLink and Comcast will keep Seattle competitive is taking a pretty big risk.

$800 million is propaganda. It comes from one study done in 2007. Fiber deployments have become much more common and much cheaper since then. I believe Gigabit had it in the $300 million range. And it would be much, much cheaper if we piggybacked on to City Light's planned upgrade of their meters (one option they've talked about is running fiber to the meter). This stuff isn't hard. I know the council member of the Sandy, OR who drove their fiber deployment and it was pretty straightforward. They have a town of about ten thousand people and they can get gigabit for $60 ($40 for 100mb). They have no caps, they do no filtering, and their connections to services like Netflix simply blow Comcast away (because they don't have a conflict of interest). That Seattle, a city of vastly more resources with a large portion of its economy dependent on the Internet, can't do something similar is simply evidence of incompetence.

The problem with the rule is that one has to get 60% Yes from ALL of the adjacent homeowners, not just the ones returning their ballot/notice/postcard/whatever. That's stupid; and not how any voting body does it. All they have to do is change the rule to 60% NO from ALL of the adjacent homeowners, and they should be free and clear except in cases where the neighbors really DON'T want a box on their street.