Click! Network is an open access

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

cable system owned by Tacoma Power, a part of Tacoma Public Utilities in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, Washington, Olympia, and northwest of Mount ...

. It provides

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

and Internet connectivity for residents and businesses in Tacoma, University Place,

Fircrest Fircrest is a city in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 7,156 at the 2020 census. History Fircrest was officially incorporated on September 19, 1925. Like its neighbor University Place, it is a middle-class suburb o ...

Lakewood Lakewood may refer to: Places Australia * Lakewood, Western Australia, an abandoned town in Western Australia Canada * Lakewood, Edmonton, Alberta * Lakewood Suburban Centre, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Philippines * Lakewood, Zamboanga del S ...

and

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross ...

. Back in the late 1990s there was talk of

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a r ...

of the power industry, much like the banking and airlines industries flourished shortly after their deregulations. Utility companies are traditionally a very conservative business with relatively little change or innovation since the beginning of the century. Tacoma Power's management team had the foresight to look into the future and predict some of the results that would come from deregulation of power companies. Deregulation would mean that power companies would no longer have their protected monopolies and they would be forced into more of a delivery business since they would still own the wires. To strengthen Tacoma Power's position in this type of a business environment Steven Klein, then Superintendent, suggested that they invest in an innovation in their power delivery system, i.e. the "SmartMeter". When Tacoma Power started drawing up plans to develop a 100 million dollar fiber-optic network to link its power substations, and saw potential value for its customers at little additional cost to the utility to expanding the network to offer cable television, high-speed Internet and high-speed data services to the community. After originally approaching

TCI Cable Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was a cable television provider in the United States, and for most of its history was controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone. The company was started in 1958 in Bozeman, Montana as Western Microwave, Inc. and C ...

to be the cable television service provider and being turned down, Tacoma Power decided to create their own cable company. These services compete with the existing

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

service providers in the area. Commercial high-speed data services began in 1997, cable TV in 1998, and high-speed Internet services over cable modem in 1999. Click! is one of the largest municipal telecommunications systems in the United States.

References

Internet service providers of the United States Tacoma Public Utilities Public utilities of the United States Cable television companies of the United States {{US-telecom-company-stub