Seattle Free Wi-Fi Project - Opens In Columbia City (Rainier Valley) & University District

Seattle - May 18, 2005

With just a few keystrokes, Mayor Greg Nickels boldly launches Seattle into the 21st Century....

   Seattle's Mayor Greg Nickels, along with Community Technology Planner David Keyes,
   logs onto the new free Wi-Fi hotspot in Columbia City, Rainier Valley, Seattle.

Seattle, a major center of tech innovation, and home to such mega-techno-giants as Microsoft, Real Networks, F5 Networks, Getty Images, Amazon.com, InfoSpace, Onyx, Cray Supercomputers, Data I/O, and Drugstore.com, took a bold step into the 21st Century today when Mayor Greg Nickels logged onto the first of what will perhaps be a city-wide free Wi-Fi project. Wi-Fi, short for Wide-Fidelity, is a means to connect wirelessly to the Internet.

To a crowd of perhaps 50 or so local business and community leaders, and several local TV crews, Mayor Nickels explained the value of today's step towards free wireless Internet access for the community - "connecting neighborhoods to that great wealth of information that is out there, using it as an economic development tool, a way to get people into the business districts...the great restaurants & cafes...to sit and think, and hook up with the rest of the World, to hook up with many City services, more and more of which are available online...then to move into several City parks, making them places that people will want to be...places that are safe and attractive...".

Seattle Wi-Fi Hotspot Sign

Initially, the Free Wi-Fi service will be available in Columbia City in the Rainier Valley (Southeast Seattle), and "The Ave" in the University District (Northeast Seattle), followed by rollouts in Occidental Park (Pioneer Square), Freeway Park, Westlake Park, and Victor Steinbrueck Park (Pike Place Market).

Nickels thanked the various partners, sponsors and departments involved in getting the system up and running, including the Office of Economic Development, the Department of Neighborhoods, the Department of Information Technology, Seattle City Light, the University and Rainier Valley Chambers of Commerce, the University of Washington, HomeSight, and the Atlantic Street Center.

The free Wi-Fi is blazingly fast - up to 5 Mbps (Megabytes Per Second), according to David Keyes from the Seattle Department of Information Technology.

Additional Information:

Coverage map for Columbia City. Coverage map for the University District. (PDF)

Logging On:
   1) Open your wireless software.
   2) Set your Network ID (SSID) to: seattlewifi
   3) Connect and open your web browser

Also see: Seattle.gov Wi-Fi page.