[1][2] Since 2004, leadership in the City of Seattle pursued affordable, Internet access for residents and businesses with the hope of using a city-sponsored network.
[3] The City abandoned one effort in July 2012, and pursued a new strategy – leasing excess capacity on the city-owned fiber to private providers.
[7] The project is made up of three parts: fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-business, a dedicated gigabit to multi-family housing and offices and next-generation wireless cloud services in 12 neighborhoods throughout the city.
These transmitters can beam fiber internet to multi-family housing and offices across Seattle, even those outside the twelve demonstration neighborhoods, as long as they are in a line of sight.
[11] The University of Washington will provide community leadership and collaborate with Gigabit Seattle on public uses of the next generation network, piloting health care and education applications.