Report deals blow to municipal broadband advocates

Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland Jul 1, 2025

Feb 6, 2018

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                <h1>Report deals blow to municipal broadband advocates</h1>
                <h2><p>Mayor Ed Murray's new broadband report is out, offering reams of analysis, high price tags for a municipal network and some recommendations likely to provoke considerable discussion about whether such a network is feasible without significant amounts of additional financing or a private partnership. The report says that</p></h2>
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               <p>By <a href="/author/joe-copeland-crosscut-com/">Joe Copeland</a></p> 
              <p><time datetime="2025-02-04T05:00:00-08:00">Feb 6, 2018</time></p>
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            <p>Mayor Ed Murray's new broadband report is out, offering reams of analysis, high price tags for a municipal network and some recommendations likely to provoke considerable discussion about whether such a network is feasible without significant amounts of additional financing or a private partnership. The report says that the city might itself serve a niche market for those customers wanting more capacity than is currently available from most private providers. GeekWire <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2015/seattle-officials-municipal-broadband-too-risky-and-expensive-for-city-to-build-alone/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">calls the report</a> a "setback for advocates of municipal broadband," and a first reading certainly seems to raise the possibility that advocates will see it as stacking the deck against them. The report <a href="http://www.seattle.gov/broadband/broadband-study?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">is here</a>.</p>
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Mayor Ed Murray's new broadband report is out, offering reams of analysis, high price tags for a municipal network and some recommendations likely to provoke considerable discussion about whether such a network is feasible without significant amounts of additional financing or a private partnership. The report says that the city might itself serve a niche market for those customers wanting more capacity than is currently available from most private providers. GeekWire calls the report a "setback for advocates of municipal broadband," and a first reading certainly seems to raise the possibility that advocates will see it as stacking the deck against them. The report is here.

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By Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland is the former senior editor&nbsp;for Crosscut, where he has been an editor since 2010. Before that, he was an editorial writer and columnist for the Seattle P-I and editorial page edi