Having been recently named the most “unwired” city in America for its pervasive wireless broadband, Seattle is considering becoming its most wired as well. The city council is mulling recommendations of a telecom task force that recently warned the city would need more broadband — at least 20 Mb/s to 25 Mb/s to each home and business — to stay competitive over the long term. The task force set a goal for the city to achieve this by 2015.

Though the group didn't provide a specific plan to achieve its goal, it made two notable conclusions: that private industry and market forces alone won't get the job done and that fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) is the only way to satisfy Seattle's long-term broadband needs.

“We don't think even WiMAX is going to deliver 25 Mb/s,” said Tony Perez, director of Seattle's office of cable communications, who assisted the task force. While acknowledging the high cost of FTTP deployment, Perez insisted it was needed to deliver voice, high-speed data and two high-definition TV signals. “We're thinking of a long-term 40-year investment,” he said. “Fiber provides the lowest per-megabit cost of any broadband technology we studied.”

The task force is open to a variety of public/private partnerships, including a municipal wholesale fiber network (using the city's wealth of existing fiber) such as the multi-city Utopia network in Utah. Though the group heard from members of Utopia, task force chairman Steve Clifford, the former CEO of King Broadcasting, told the city council, “We did not review that model in any depth. We can't tell you if it works or not.”

If the city did pursue a Utopian model, it could meet opposition from incumbent Qwest Communications, which recently sued Utopia, claiming it exploits its government ties for unfair competitive advantages, like avoiding local taxes. But such a model would get support from private service providers, such as Speakeasy. That firm plans to deploy WiMAX in Seattle, but its chairman, Mike Apgar, said he'd support a muni wholesale network as a big-pipe complement.

For now, the task force said it enjoys good relations with Qwest and Comcast. (One potential strategy cited by the task force is simply supplying incumbents with whatever they would need to achieve its goal.) In a letter to Jim Compton, chairman of the council's Utilities and Technology Committee, last week, Qwest said it is currently testing ADSL2+, which delivers speeds up to 24 Mb/s over copper and could bypass the need for an expensive FTTP rollout. But a Qwest spokesperson was unable to say when it will be a commercial service.

The task force has been criticized for not seeking enough public input, but this week the city council's citizen technology advisory board is expected to add its support to that already expressed by city officials. The next step would be to create of an office of broadband. That requires a budget, which will provide the first real test of public and political support for the task force's agenda.