Seattle’s planned fiber network: The gigabit is in the details

The plan to build out a gigabit network in Seattle should result in residents getting connections in late Fall of 2013 with prices for service in the $100-range, according to Mark Ansboury the president of GigaBit Squared.

Ansboury’s startup plans to build out gigabit networks in six U.S. cities with Seattle and Chicago as the first announced locations. Seattle and the University of Washington have agreed to work with Gigabit Squared on building out the network. The city already owns its own fiber network, which it is leasing to Gigabit Squared. Ansboury estimates that the company will invest $25 million in the project to get it started with more capital required later. Unlike in Chicago, where Gigabit Squared has grant money to work with, it will have to come up with its own capital for the Seattle project. However, the ability to lease the existing Seattle fiber lowers the cost to a point where building out service becomes viable, because Gigabit Squared doesn’t have to dig trenches or string fiber along utility poles. The network will have three parts: a fiber-to-the-home component serving roughly 50,000 houses, a point-to-point gigabit wireless service and a Wi-Fi based mobile broadband service in areas where there is existing fiber. The fiber tech is pretty self-explanatory and the wireless broadband is basically superfast Wi-Fi access points that will attach to that fiber. Subscribers to Gigabit’s home service will have access to that network as part of their home service package but other Seattle residents can also buy access to that Wi-Fi network. That’s an interesting model — will people pay for superfast Wi-Fi in a specific neighborhood where they may not live? Will people who live there buy the Wi-Fi service instead of fiber?