Central District neighborhoods part of first wave of new Seattle gigabit broadband service

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The plan for laying a fat pipe to much of Capitol Hill and the Central District is a gigabit or two closer to fruition.

Gigabit Squared Seattle is building a high-speed fiber network to 14 areas of the city and said Monday its pipeline of broadband goodness will be ready to flow to the first service areas in Capitol Hill, the Central District and near UW by early 2014:

Gigabit Squared’s simplified fiber network pricing plans for Seattle will be structured as follows:

  1. Installation Charge:  Installation charges will be waived for customers signing a one-year contract for 100 Mbps service or greater.  Otherwise, a $350 installation fee is required.
  2. Service Plan Options:

Plan A:

  • 5 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload: No charge for 60 months
  • 5/1 Mbps services are transferrable to new renters or owners
  • After 60 months renters or owners can convert to a 10 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload service plan for only $10 per month

Plan B:

  • 100 Mbps download/100 Mbps upload for $45 per month
  • No installation charge with one- year contract

Plan C:

  • 1000 download/1000 upload Mbps for $80 per month

  • No installation charge with one-year contract

The company says it will announce a sign-up “process” next month. The plan is for all 14 service areas reaching more than 100,000 customers to be online by the end of 2014. The company has said it intends to eventually offer its services across all of Seattle through the combination of public and private fiber optic cables already available in the city.

The partnership between the city and D.C.-based Gigabit will likely put pressure on services and prices offered by established providers in the area like Comcast, Century Link and Wave. You can let us know what you’re currently paying for broadband service in comments.

10 thoughts on “Central District neighborhoods part of first wave of new Seattle gigabit broadband service”

  2. This is great to hear! We had condo internet ($60 for 100Mbps) when we were living in Belltown…which i terribly miss! Now after moving to the CD, we pay $40 for 15mbps with wave broadband. Comcast dosent even offer its service in our block and the only other option was century link’s old slow connections.

  3. We should be clear here that CenturyLink would *like* to improve their network speed and have money to invest. Unfortunately they are at the mercy of a Director’s Rule from Seattle’s Department of Transportation, which severely limits their ability to do work in city-owned right of way (which is where most of what they need to do needs to happen). Councilmember Harrell and the folks on Beacon Hill have been working on a pilot project to deal with this issue, with hopes that if successful there it can be expanded city-wide.

  5. If you live in a condo, does the building management have to sign up to have the building connected, or will we be able to sign up individually via the wifi component?

    • Your condo bylaws govern that. You may already have an exclusive term agreement with a present provider. Ask your board.

  6. I’d like a real map with what is going live first defined. Appears to be ‘area 3’, which would only be a little bit of the south west part of the Central Area.

  8. I’m really looking forward to this. Our DSL has gotten progressively worse in quality over the past few years, and complaints have done no good at all.