Click! Network is an open access

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

cable system owned by

Tacoma Power Tacoma Power is a public utility providing electrical power to Tacoma, Washington and the surrounding areas. Tacoma Power serves the cities of Tacoma, University Place, Fircrest, and Fife, and also provides service to parts of Steilacoom, L ...

, 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, southwest of Bellevue, Washington, Bellevue, northeast of the state capital, Olympia ...

. 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 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, southwest of Bellevue, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, northwest of Mount ...

, University Place, Fircrest, Lakewood and

Fife Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...

History

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 ...

of the power industry, much like the banking and airlines industries flourished shortly after their deregulations.

Utility companies A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

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 A monopoly (from Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable sub ...

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 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 Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

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. In 2000, the State of Washington passed RCW 54.16.330, effectively preventing further research and development of Click! Network until its repeal in 2021 during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, a period of over 20 years. In 2020, Click! Network was sold by the Tacoma Public Utilities to Rainier Connect. The utilities would continue to own the lines, but Rainier Connect would run all operations and provide maintenance. The contract was for 20 years with two extensions. The transfer of day to day operations was highly controversial amongst the Tacoma population, but was ultimately supported due to the restrictions imposed by the State of Washington nearly 20 years prior. Controversies arose again after the state level restrictions were repealed in 2021. After six months, Rainier Connect started migrating legacy

set top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV tuner input and displays output to a television set, tur ...

TV customers to an

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

system. This move was also controversial among the Tacoma population, much of whom had limited technical skills and would have significant trouble adapting to an IPTV system. Click! Network remains a highly political topic within local politics in the City of Tacoma because of its implications for the city, region, state of Washington, and implementation specifics of the federal

Build Back Better Plan The Build Back Better Plan or Build Back Better Agenda was a legislative framework proposed by U.S. President Joe Biden between 2020 and 2021. Generally viewed as ambitious in size and scope, it sought the largest nationwide public investment in ...

References

Internet service providers of the United States Tacoma Public Utilities Public utilities of the United States Cable television companies of the United States {{authority control