Click: Upgrade system for competitive advantage

Re: “Senator right to call foul on Click fiasco,” (TNT editorial, 4/13).

Are you expecting timber jobs to come back to Tacoma? Whaling? Gold rush?

I have some bad news for Sen. Steve O’Ban and The News Tribune Editorial Board: It’s 2017, and we are 35 miles from the biggest technology industry hub since Silicon Valley. That industry is coming here, even if it’s just for the turn-key office space.

New industry and our tax base in Tacoma will continue to grow from the regional technology sector and supporting enterprises. Any suggestion to the opposite is to be willfully obtuse.

The Click cable network is gold. Tech companies will relocate here to be able to put this benefit in a list of enticements to draw talented candidates. Tech workers hate communication monopolies, in business and at home.

Service from a municipal provider will draw startups. It gives Tacoma a unique competitive advantage.

Fix the Click revenue model. Expand the offerings to include public wifi to coincide with completion of Sound Transit light rail, but don’t kill it.

Please do not comment on technology you don’t understand or a future that isn’t going to comply with your 19th-century pro-monopoly Dickensian philosophies. You clearly don’t understand the future starts here.

This story was originally published April 21, 2017 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Click: Upgrade system for competitive advantage."