[SLL] Seattle to get its Click! ?

[Creede Lambard]

Ken Meyer wrote:
> What makes you think you're ahead, Glenn :-)
>
> Very astute though; I do live up here, in the land of umpteen bazillion
> little evergreen needle antennae waiting to listen in on and sop-up your
> wireless signal.
>
> I don't have any sight line to the north, but anyway, I think Creed must be
> living in a storage unit, or maybe under a blackjack table at Goldie's.
>
> Shoreline is a "wonderful" place that has shed all of the onerous social and
> other crushing big-city-type obligations of Seattle while maintaining
> adjacent proximity to take advantages of all the benefits that such a
> population center offers.  The poo-bahs of Shoreline still think that tin
> cans and string are the order of the day for communications, just as long as
> they can spend $40 Mil for a mile and a half of Aurora Ave. asphalt ego trip
> with two $1 Mil pedestrian bridges over it.  This esthetic miracle is
> trumpeted right next to the article bemoaning shortfall in the schools
> budget.  Then they rail hypocritically against the evils of the casinos, but
> don't touch them, because they represent a very substantial fraction of the
> city's tax base.
>
> As for Wi-Fi distance, the guys at SeattleWireless.NET once sent a signal
> from a surplus microwave tower in Enumclaw back to Seattle somewhat
> successfully -- that's 40 miles or so.
>
> The Seattle FTTH proposal has targeted 25 Mpbs down AND up for openers.
> They are still juggling the business model from: city builds and operates,
> to city provides its fiber and access to the planting strips and lets
> another enterprise build and operate the system (with payment to the city),
> with all the variant perturbations of the division of responsibility between
> city and commercial participants in between seemingly still on the table.
>
> As I think I said here (or somewhere else), the consultants' estimate is
> $250 M to pass all the homes, businesses and schools in the area and another
> $250 M to hook-up the premises.  Much better investment, IMHO, than building
> a stadium and, for perspective, only one-third of the MARGINAL cost of
> putting the new viaduct underground.
>
> Talking to Bill Schrier, CTO of Seattle on Tuesday, he estimated 6 - 8 weeks
> before something official might surface, at least to begin the debate.
>
> Ken M.
Thanks for the brief overview of my soon-to-be-adopted home town. :)

The house we're moving into has some disadvantages. The price is right, 
the size is right, and the schools (so people tell me) will be better 
for the grandkids who will be sharing the house. The disadvantages from 
my point of view stem from this house's location at the bottom of a bowl 
equidistant from the four arterials surrounding it (which the busses I 
will need to ride to get to work will be driving down), and surrounded 
by some pretty tall evergreens As Ken says, they're really good signal 
soakers. I'm hoping I'll be able to put up a functional ham radio system 
without having to send a 100' tower up to clear the trees (which would 
probably make even our easygoing landlord blanch). The trees shouldn't 
affect signals at longer wavelengths (say, 20 meters) much; 2-meter 
signals might have trouble getting through. 2.4 GHz signals and up (the 
realm of 802.11b/g) would probably have no chance at all.

So I guess we're sticking with Comcast for the foreseeable future. At 
least, that is, until we make friends with someone on the other side of 
the road with an antenna tower, a suitable antenna (forget the Pringles 
can, get me an 11-element quagi with some real gain!) and a way through 
them trees.

73 de WA7KPK