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HarborLink Network News & Events
November 8, 2006
Bellevue, Wash., To Launch
Downtown Network
By Glenn Fleishman -
Wi-Fi Networking News
 The
Seattle suburb has turned
into a city in its own
right: The town of
Bellevue was once looked
down by Seattle residents on
as a lesser bedroom
community, albeit one with
vastly better schools than
the city proper. Now,
Bellevue has a huge and
prosperous downtown with
buildings that don’t quite
scrape the sky, but make a
stab at it—and will have a
downtown Wi-Fi zone long
before Seattle moves in that
direction. (The highway that
crosses Lake Washington from
Seattle to Bellevue is
spitting distance from my
home.)
Bellevue told The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer’s John
Cook today that they would
deploy a 1.5-acre network
across downtown, including
the Meydenbauer Center, home
to the recent
20,000-attendee
Penny Arcade Expo,
City Hall, and Downtown
Park, and Bellevue Square,
an upscale mall that has
grown enormously in recent
years. The city plans to
expand the network to cover
its entire area, ultimately,
and has a strong focus on
utility for municipal
employees.
There are few places that
people live in this initial
coverage area, and it’s a
good place to start.
Somewhere north of several
thousand people come into
this part of Bellevue for
work and meetings each day,
and it’s not far from
T-Mobile USA’s headquarters,
either. Microsoft has
offices in downtown, too, as
they’ve long outgrown their
nearby Redmond headquarters.
Mobile workers and those
with offices in the area who
want to get out will see a
huge benefit from an outdoor
network, as they will
already have the gear and be
using it in their Wi-Fi and
Internet-equipped offices.
T-Mobile has launched the
first unlicensed mobile
access (UMA) network in the
US—combining seamless
calling across cellular and
Wi-Fi network—in the greater
Seattle area, and the
Bellevue network may attract
users of the dual-network
service.
The network will be
available to service
providers, the first of
which will be HarborLink of
Ohio, which will offer free,
advertising-supported
access, and provide the city
a 10-percent cut of revenue.
The city hopes to wholesale
service to other providers
under other terms, as well.
Cisco Systems has provided a
no-cost loan for 180 days to
the city of the necessary
gear, which could be leased
($25K to $35K per year),
sold ($101K), or returned
($0).
Seattle has a couple of
neighborhood test networks,
as noted in this article,
but its focus has been on
citywide fiber, with
fiber-oriented firms having
bid on an outstanding RFP.
The RFP mentions Wi-Fi as an
optional extra, not a
requirement.
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