Seattle Community Case Study – Fiber Implementation

When Jim Loter became Seattle’s director of digital engagement in 2018, the city was already one of the nation’s tech hubs. Both Microsoft and Amazon famously called Seattle home. Ninety-five percent of the city’s homes had internet access. Washington State enjoyed more broadband penetration than the national average  overall. Even so, as recently as 2023, nine percent of households throughout the state did not have any kind of broadband connection. And far more lacked the advantages of fiber internet. 

Despite the broad reach of legacy internet systems, Seattle’s digital infrastructure had yet to reach its full potential. Nearly 44,000 households lacked the digital access, devices, and skills they needed. To strengthen its position as one of the most connected cities in America, more residents needed access to the kinds of speeds that only fiber can provide. Internet service providers (ISPs) were eager to do their part for Seattle’s digital business transformation by building out their 5G networks across the metro area.

“That required a ton of fiber and a ton of antenna deployments—much more so than previous generations,” says Loter. At the time, deploying fiber internet lines was an exceedingly complicated process:

• ISPs had to get approval from several different agencies.
• Digging up pavement required a street use permit.
• Using utility poles, whose primary purpose is to deliver electricity, required a pole attachment permit.
• If an ISP had to install fiber internet in a historic building, they needed to go through yet another complicated permitting process.

“There was a network of city agencies that had never come together around the topic of broadband deployment,” Loter recalls. “We had to convene the decision makers in every department that had a stake in the process and become the glue that held all of that together. We needed to work together to expand access to broadband.”

Loter and his colleagues also wanted to ensure that fiber advantages extended beyond the city’s tech center. “[We had to improve] the broadband experience for our constituents,” he says, “especially those that lived in underserved communities in low-income areas.”

What followed was a huge undertaking—one that now helps deliver the advantages of fiber internet to as many people as possible.

The trick was figuring out how to expand community internet access without disrupting the lives of the community itself. “We had to achieve a balance between managing the public’s right of way,” says Loter, and making it easier for providers to build new digital infrastructure. While “other cities granted franchises to certain companies and just allowed them to go out and do whatever they wanted,” says Loter, that wasn’t an option in Seattle.

Before telecom industries started laying down fiber lines, street use permits came with certain conditions. For example, if digging up a street destroyed or blocked a pedestrian ramp, contractors had to build a new ramp to maintain accessibility standards.

Loter acknowledges that internet providers see those restrictions as both a regulatory barrier and an added cost. “We don’t see it that way,” he says. “We have to maintain the fabric of what makes Seattle Seattle.” Innovation couldn’t come at the expense of equity, livability, or sustainability.

Thanks in part to the accelerated construction of fiber-optic cable lines, the city’s Internet for All Seattle Initiative has accomplished much more.

• In conjunction with organizations like the University of Washington’s Local Connectivity Lab, Seattle Public Schools brought fiber advantages to school buildings throughout the city.
• Seattle Public Schools also increased the quality of home internet access for their students, fostering up to 20,000 internet connections and devices for underserved residents.
• Seattle’s Technology Matching Fund offers grants to organizations providing community-based solutions to unserved and underserved residents.

Esther Jang notes that the Local Connectivity Lab had trouble acquiring cell sites for their wireless networks before Seattle's fiber expansion. As fiber access increased, that began to change. Now, says Jang, “There is the possibility of using existing city resources to get internet connectivity to low-income housing complexes around the city.” (Read how LCL helped to accomplish this in our second Seattle community case study). When low-income housing complexes are closer to existing fiber lines, connecting them to individual units becomes far easier and less expensive.