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The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the bui

The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the building itself has a street-level office with signs for both AT&T and CenturyLink. 3rd Ave itself is slightly notorious - hosting the surface entrances for the Seattle bus tunnel, and a large number of inter-city routes, the area has a reputation for crime and the occasional death by shooting. It was a bit worrying to commute through, as a bus rider, and seems like an odd location for an ISP street-level office. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/8oxjkCL8JFm https://goo.gl/maps/8oxjkCL8JFm

weej 8y ago
Completely anecdotal evidence, but every morning I walk by this building and without failure I run into wireless interference of some sort on different frequency bands (GSM, bluetooth, etc.). Not saying correlation is causation here, but the interfernce is definitely a little unnerving.
walrus01 8y ago
Its choice of location is nothing nefarious. It was built in the mid 1950s as a Pacific Northwest Bell telco central office, for phone lines serving downtown Seattle, in the days when dialtone rotary pulse-dial phone systems were the highest technology available. The PNW Bell phone system and its interconnections with the AT&T Long Lines system had some sites which were mutually shared with military AUTOVON and other federal government long distance telecom circuits (such as those which fed the giant SAGE installations at McChord and in Moses Lake). It became a USWest site in 1984 through the breakup of the Bell monopoly system, and then Qwest and eventually Centurylink.
- aardvark291 8y ago
  > giant SAGE installations at McChord and in Moses Lake What's that?
  - EvanAnderson 8y ago
    SAGE was a late 1950's-60's computerized air defense system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Enviro... There used to be some SAGE equipment at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I don't know if it's still there or not, but it was definitely interesting to see. The "light gun" user interface and the control consoles have a really pleasing aesthetic.
closeparen 8y ago
It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?
- stephengillie 8y ago
  3rd Ave wouldn't be my first choice to locate a new ISP store, or any new retail location. 4th or 5th would be better. Going up the hill to somewhere like Boren and Madison might be easier for people across the city to reach. The historic reasons from other posters give good justification for the current location.
- walrus01 8y ago
  Every major north american city has a legacy telco central office in downtown, in a very central location, from the days of pulse-dial and then DTMF dial analog phones. Always owned by whatever corporate entity the Bell System and then ILEC eventually became. Seattle, for example, also has the Elliot CO in Belltown: http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/ http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/
  - autocracy 8y ago
    Yeah, you have to remember that in pulse dial days a central office station had a reach of roughly 3 miles. The longer you go, the more you're paying for cable, repeaters, or just losing quality. 90 volt AC for ringing has a limited range!
    - walrus01 8y ago
      People who've never seen it in person find it amazing that things like 1200 pair phone cables exist... Here's a photo of just a 100-pair: https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp on this page is a photo of a 1200-pair: http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant&t=Rural%20Outside%20Plant http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant...
      - foobar1962 8y ago
rdiddly 8y ago
And the building has "reinforced concrete foundations"! Wow, sounds exotic! Just kidding... not sure if they mean something else, but "reinforced concrete foundations" might be the most commonplace thing in structural engineering. (Most foundations involve concrete, and most concrete is reinforced.) So this is a bit like saying your car has a paint job. But hey I used to be a structural engineer, and unfair ballbusting of the poor hapless journalist aside, I'm still kind of curious what feature they were actually describing. Edit: I'll wager it's a seismic upgrade. The building's vintage is from back when they didn't have as good of a handle on the seismic stuff. And the Cascadia Subduction Zone is no joke!
- ghein 8y ago
  The Intercept are voluntarily acting as an arm of the FSB. Just think of them as Stalin's New York Times - willing accomplices to Soviet genocide.
  - dmix 8y ago
    Yes, journalism working hard to spread awareness of a massive global surveillance systems, with rubberstamp oversight, that threaten fundamental rights found in all western countries against dragnets and warrantless privacy invasion = must be the Russian boogiemen at work. "Move along citizen"
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    "Soviet genocide"? There are numerous problems with that concept, besides the obvious fact that USSR ceased to exist decades ago. Where is the genocide occurring? Is it Libya? Iraq? Yemen? Somalia? Niger?
  - hsienmaneja 8y ago
    This isn’t a popular place for such a viewpoint.
dan_quixote 8y ago
That's a few blocks away from the notorious 3rd and Pike area. All of 3rd downtown is a bit rough around the edges due to being a transit corridor with lots of transient riders and homeless people, but besides 3rd and Pike it's nowhere near as dangerous as similar places in rust-belt cities.

weej 8y ago

Completely anecdotal evidence, but every morning I walk by this building and without failure I run into wireless interference of some sort on different frequency bands (GSM, bluetooth, etc.). Not saying correlation is causation here, but the interfernce is definitely a little unnerving.

walrus01 8y ago

Its choice of location is nothing nefarious. It was built in the mid 1950s as a Pacific Northwest Bell telco central office, for phone lines serving downtown Seattle, in the days when dialtone rotary pulse-dial phone systems were the highest technology available. The PNW Bell phone system and its interconnections with the AT&T Long Lines system had some sites which were mutually shared with military AUTOVON and other federal government long distance telecom circuits (such as those which fed the giant SAGE installations at McChord and in Moses Lake). It became a USWest site in 1984 through the breakup of the Bell monopoly system, and then Qwest and eventually Centurylink.

aardvark291 8y ago
> giant SAGE installations at McChord and in Moses Lake What's that?
- EvanAnderson 8y ago
  SAGE was a late 1950's-60's computerized air defense system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Enviro... There used to be some SAGE equipment at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I don't know if it's still there or not, but it was definitely interesting to see. The "light gun" user interface and the control consoles have a really pleasing aesthetic.

closeparen 8y ago

It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?

stephengillie 8y ago
3rd Ave wouldn't be my first choice to locate a new ISP store, or any new retail location. 4th or 5th would be better. Going up the hill to somewhere like Boren and Madison might be easier for people across the city to reach. The historic reasons from other posters give good justification for the current location.
walrus01 8y ago
Every major north american city has a legacy telco central office in downtown, in a very central location, from the days of pulse-dial and then DTMF dial analog phones. Always owned by whatever corporate entity the Bell System and then ILEC eventually became. Seattle, for example, also has the Elliot CO in Belltown: http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/ http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/
- autocracy 8y ago
  Yeah, you have to remember that in pulse dial days a central office station had a reach of roughly 3 miles. The longer you go, the more you're paying for cable, repeaters, or just losing quality. 90 volt AC for ringing has a limited range!
  - walrus01 8y ago
    People who've never seen it in person find it amazing that things like 1200 pair phone cables exist... Here's a photo of just a 100-pair: https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp on this page is a photo of a 1200-pair: http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant&t=Rural%20Outside%20Plant http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant...
    - foobar1962 8y ago

rdiddly 8y ago

And the building has "reinforced concrete foundations"! Wow, sounds exotic! Just kidding... not sure if they mean something else, but "reinforced concrete foundations" might be the most commonplace thing in structural engineering. (Most foundations involve concrete, and most concrete is reinforced.) So this is a bit like saying your car has a paint job. But hey I used to be a structural engineer, and unfair ballbusting of the poor hapless journalist aside, I'm still kind of curious what feature they were actually describing. Edit: I'll wager it's a seismic upgrade. The building's vintage is from back when they didn't have as good of a handle on the seismic stuff. And the Cascadia Subduction Zone is no joke!

ghein 8y ago
The Intercept are voluntarily acting as an arm of the FSB. Just think of them as Stalin's New York Times - willing accomplices to Soviet genocide.
- dmix 8y ago
  Yes, journalism working hard to spread awareness of a massive global surveillance systems, with rubberstamp oversight, that threaten fundamental rights found in all western countries against dragnets and warrantless privacy invasion = must be the Russian boogiemen at work. "Move along citizen"
- jessaustin 8y ago
  "Soviet genocide"? There are numerous problems with that concept, besides the obvious fact that USSR ceased to exist decades ago. Where is the genocide occurring? Is it Libya? Iraq? Yemen? Somalia? Niger?
- hsienmaneja 8y ago
  This isn’t a popular place for such a viewpoint.

dan_quixote 8y ago

That's a few blocks away from the notorious 3rd and Pike area. All of 3rd downtown is a bit rough around the edges due to being a transit corridor with lots of transient riders and homeless people, but besides 3rd and Pike it's nowhere near as dangerous as similar places in rust-belt cities.