New cable company enters Spokane market, will invest $100 million in fiber network
(www.spokesman.com)The Spokane City Council unanimously approved a 10-year franchise agreement Monday with TDS Telecommunications, a Wisconsin-based company that plans to bring high-speed internet and more than 100 channels of cable television to Spokane customers.
TDS plans to invest more than $100 million to lay hundreds of miles of fiberoptic cable to form a brand-new network throughout the city. The company hopes to begin construction later this spring, although that is subject to negotiation with the city.
This is huge for Spokane. I doubt I'll be able to take advantage of this for a long time since we live a few miles outside the city limits, but allowing Comcast to have a monopoly for decades has resulted in almost no consumer fiberoptic availability in Spokane when we should have had it for at least a decade now.