The Community Connectivity Consortium began in 2002 with a partnership between the Lake Washington School District, the University of Washington, and the cities of Bellevue and Kirkland. It has grown organically to the south, so that there are now major connection points in Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton, Kent, Auburn, and Tukwila. Consortium goals are to:

• Create a vibrant and competitive region by providing connectivity to meet the needs of our community institutions – hospitals, schools, city halls
• Expand the use of our network to support new applications and needs
• Build resiliency in our network and for our partners by adding redundancy and connecting with other regional networks
• Ensure a sustainable organizational, governance and management structure to make sound, long-term decisions benefiting our members

The Consortium’s regional goals were enhanced by the award of two US Dept of Homeland Security Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants, one for $600K in 2009 which allowed us to build from the City of Bellevue to City of Renton and an additional grant in 2010 which built the fiber network into the City of Tukwila.

2017 has been an exciting year for the Consortium. Active electronics are now in-place and the network is live with 10GB traffic. Members are engaged in planning activities for connectivity to regional resources in 2018 including internet and cloud services. The network contains six optical nodes placed strategically around Lake Washington.