With many of my friends telling me that our City of Bellingham (COB) government is pretending our broadband issues are solved with the arrival of Ziply and Quantum Fiber (previously owned by CenturyLink and recently purchased by AT&T) I decided to do some digging. The picture above is of a map highlighting in blue homes I was able to confirm have access to Quantum Fiber. Can’t see the blue very well? Well, that’s because most of the city isn’t covered by affordable, private, fiber services and probably never will be as we explore in this document. 

Bottom Line:  

The COB and telecoms played us again using the tactics Susan Crawford warned us about in her books  “Captive Audience”and “Fiber” the telecoms gave us just a bit of fiber in wealthy neighborhoods to make the powerful back off of demanding something better before abandoning the rest of the city. The light blue areas on the map show just how few people have access to Quantum fiber. In short, our Comcast monopoly remains firmly in place.

About 20% in 3 decades and not even Gigabit: You will see that only about 20% of Bellinghammers have access to fiber from Quantum and that it often does not perform at Gigabit speeds especially when tested with an accurate tester like the RRUL load tester. In fact, Quantum only claims up to 940 Mbits in many cases and even less in others. Bellingham remains a city where most can’t get Gigabit fiber for an affordable price. Private industry has NOT solved our issues. However, the existing COB public fiber network has been in place for decades and covers the entire city. Sadly, this administration and council have turned out to be just as corrupt as all of the others in regard to telecom matters. Comcast retains a healthy 80% monopoly in Bellingham. Does this mean 40% fiber coverage if we wait another 10 years? Well no, as we’ll explore below.      

My procedure: I used the COB neighborhood map to look at 5 locations per neighborhood based on the basic compass points. I looked at Ziply, Quantum, Comcast and Astound. [See RELATED FILES below] The map only shows Quantum locations for the following reason. Ziply lists no locations in the COB. Astound refers people to AT&T Fiber (aka Quantum fiber) and everything not in light blue is still Comcast. Quantum, while slightly better than Comcast in most situations, is known to be a hybridized system and not true fiber. Thanks to lax FCC regulations Quantum is allowed to say they are a pure fiber service although a mixture of services is reported in many situations. Still, compared to Comcasts’ network, based on antiquated last mile Coax cable, it’s generally better. 

COB Deception: Be patient, AT&T is building the network: Backed by a COB government that always helps those that can already help themselves first, both Ziply and Quantum tell you to be patient and pretend like buildouts are going to happen. Occasionally, they actually do, but there is no reason to hold your breath regardless of what the COB says. As outlined in Crawford’s books, the big telecoms meet and carve out territories. A street slated for construction one month may get traded with another telecom behind closed doors the next. Broad St. in Bellingham might get traded by AT&T with Comcast for Broad St. in another city, for example and that build you were looking forward to will simply never happen.

Gigabit Speeds: All Quantum speeds are listed as “up to” meaning they almost never operate at their stated speeds. Most are not even gigabit but 940 Mbits or less and that’s only on download. Upload speeds are usually worse. In a proper fiber network speeds would be symmetrical. Throttling and all of the other underhanded methods American telecoms use to remove value from your connection are still in full effect.

Gigabit Standard: When we started the fight for public fiber about 10 years ago Gigabit was the speed we needed to reach for everyone. Now, applyingNielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth, we really need to make sure everyone in Bellingham has 5 Gigabit speeds or better. That is if we want to compete with the rest of the developed world. That world offers the following for about the same price. “In Japan, 5 Gigabit per second (5 Gbps) fiber internet typically costs between approximately $36 to $43 USD before any promotional discounts.”  10 Gig options are available for what you pay for your obsolete Comcast connection. Oh and again, most of us don’t really have Gigabit service, even if our ISPs tells us we do.

Breakdown by neighborhood for current access to Quantum “Fiber”:

Cordata: 20% Access
Meridian: 10% Access
King Mountain: 0% Access
Irongate: 0% Access
Barkley: 0% Access
Birchwood: 0% Access
Columbia: 80% Access
Cornwall Park: 40% Access
Lettered Streets: 100% Access (Note: This is where the privately owned C-Street (CSSNW) Facility is. Really the only backhaul option in Bellingham at 15 times the rate it costs in the rest of the developed world or on public networks in the US.
Sunnyland: 20% Access
Alabama Hill: 0% Access
Silver Beach: 0% Access
City Center: 0% Access (Note: This number is skewed because the COB uses its own public fiber network. You know, the one that we paid for that they deny us access to.)
York: 60% Access
Puget: 0% Access
Whatcom Falls: 0% Access
Sehome: 60% Access
South Hill: 100% Access
Fairhaven: 16% Access
Edgemoor: 0% Access
South: 0% Access
Samish: 0% Access
Total City-Wide Access: About 20%

The 100% Access Option: A 100% low-cost access option exists and has for decades. The COB public fiber network already covers the entire city. All we need is to finally put a government in power that will finally give us access to the public network we already paid for instead of constantly lining the pockets of big telecoms, WAVE and CSSNW.

The problem with our backhaul Duopoly: In Bellingham, Whatcom County and Island County there are really only 2 options for backhaul. What is backhaul? It is the middle-mile connection that connects your service to the internet backbone. Ultimately, all of your communications run through this mid-mile and it’s really pretty awful in our neck of the woods. Years ago Ziply purchased only 48 strands of aerial fiber from a now defunct fiber company. However, that company used CSSNW or WAVE for backhaul. WAVE quoted me $30,000 just to get hooked up to a hybridized Coax/Fiber network and then $900 a month for Gigabit, CSSNW quoted a friend of mine that owns a business in Fairhaven much more. That is about 13.5 through 15 times more than it costs in the rest of the developed world and/or on many public networks in the U.S. These two companies control virtually all of the backhaul in our area and it is not enough. That is why, no matter what service you get, broadband in Bellingham is generally bad.

Now, the PUD, city, port, etc. can create public backhaul with the City of Mount Vernon using their public network, or create their own, but they refuse to do so even though we have no backhaul redundancy for our emergency communications services and it would greatly improve services county-wide and attract new businesses and opportunities. The COB, PUD, Port and County governments are hell bent on making sure that WAVE and CSSNW executives never have to worry about working too hard or where the source of the next payment for their racing sailboats are coming from.

 Your welfare and progress in our city are very low priorities for them. This backhaul crisis and the monopolies surrounding it are an issue nationwide.