Jamie
Part 4 in the Gigabit Whatcom series.
Building equitable broadband requires accurate, ground-level data. For years, official federal broadband coverage maps overstated availability by marking an entire rural census block as “served” if even a single house had a basic connection.
Gigabit Whatcom conducted an on-the-ground assessment across Whatcom County to evaluate real-world access, pricing, and infrastructure gaps.
Key findings
- The symmetrical gap: Legacy cable providers offered decent download speeds in urban areas, but rural residents suffered from severe upload constraints. These create major bottlenecks for remote work, video conferencing, and cloud backups.
- Infrastructure bottlenecks: Pole attachment negotiations, utility “make-ready” costs, and complex geography made it expensive to extend the last mile into unserved zones.
- Public leadership shift: The partnership between the Port of Bellingham and Whatcom PUD #1 emerged as a key driver of public open-access infrastructure, deploying backbone fiber in areas overlooked by commercial broadband providers.
Previous in the series: Community Organizing in Action: The McGee Road Local Loop Project
Next in the series: Updating the Framework: Lessons Learned from Whatcom County’s Broadband Journey