Tag: "tennessee"

Tullahoma, Tennessee, Latest Inductee to the 1 Gig Club

Posted May 2, 2013 by Lisa Gonzalez

In 2008, the Tullahoma Utilities Board in Tennessee, created LighTUBe. In addition to attracting employers, the FTTH network connects residents and provides smart meter capability. The network now offers 1 gig service to business and residential customers.

Andrea Agardy, from the Tullahoma News, covered the story. Residential customers who now purchase the highest tier, 300 Mbps, will be automatically upgraded at the same $300 monthly rate. LighTUBe will provide 1 gig business connectivity on a case-by-case basis.

Brian Skelton, General Manager, said:

“It shows that we can provide anything they want,” he said. “The TUB board made the decision to build a fiber to the premise system for economic development reasons, and it is paying off for our community. We want to make Tullahoma a much more desirable location for technology companies to locate, due to our ultra-high speed Internet and our highly skilled workforce. Tullahoma is light years ahead of most cities in the United States with the ability to offer these incredibly fast Internet speeds, and we look forward to the benefits this will bring to our city.”

Kudos to LighTUBe and the community of Tullahoma!

CDE Lightband The Latest 1 Gig Network

Posted April 9, 2013 by Lisa Gonzalez

What can you do with a gig? There is a residential customer in Clarksville, Tennessee, that knows. CDE Lightband, Clarksville's municipal provider, recently began offering 1 gig service for $349.95 per month. The Leaf Chronicle recently reported that CDE Lightband also just signed on its first 1 gig residential customer.

CDE Lightband offers triple play and is part of the Clarksville Department of Electricity. Clarksville is a fast growing city with around 133,000 located along the northwestern border of the state. In addition to the 1 gig service, CDE Lightband offers speeds from 10 - 100 Mbps symmetrical and a variety of smartly priced packages.

While 1 gig of service will make life faster for the residential customers who choose it, community leaders also see the possibilities for the community as a whole. From the article:

"Opportunities for education, health and industrial uses are unlimited with the 1 gigabit of Internet services that CDE Lightband now offers, and it helps to position our community for further economic growth,” Clarksville Mayor Kim McMillan said in the [press] release.

Congrats to CDE Lightband, its new 1 gig customer, and the Clarksville community!

CBS Discovers Chattanooga Has Nation-Leading Internet Network

Posted March 5, 2013 by Christopher Mitchell

Chattanooga has made the national TV news, with CBS doing a segment about America's best Internet network - owned and operated by the city of Chattanooga.

They make a few minor mistakes - Chattanooga is one of several cities that have made gigabit available to everyone (including Bristol VA and TN; Morristown, TN; Lafayette, LA; and Burlington, VT. We track community-owned networks have have made some level.

It is important to note that these networks do not offer a gig as the basic tier. However, their starting tiers are incredibly competitive, often much faster than the higher tiers of competing networks.

This video is no longer available.

Morristown Explains Why it Built a Fiber Network for Itself - Community Broadband Bits #35

Posted February 26, 2013 by Christopher Mitchell

Morristown, Tennessee, is one of very few communities where anyone in town can immediately get a gigabit delivered to their home and business. General Manager and CEO Jody Wigington of the municipal electric utility, Morristown Utility Systems, joins me to discuss why they built their network and how it is has benefited the community.

The network has also attracted businesses that otherwise might not consider the community for an investment. Competing providers have kept their prices lower than they do in communities with less competition, a tremendous benefit. MUS Fiber keeps more than $3 million in the community each year. Just think of that -- distributing $3 million among the residents of a community each year. That is real money that helps boost the local businesses.

We also talk about the origin of the system, how it has benefited the electric utility, and advice for other communities that are considering their own network investments. Read our additional coverage of MUS Fiber.

Read the transcript from this conversation here.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.

This show is 22 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!

Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here.

Find more episodes in our podcast index.

Thanks to D. Charles Speer & the Helix for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Chattanooga's Network On Knoxville News

Posted February 24, 2013 by Lisa Gonzalez

We recently came across a news report from Knoxville's WBIR.

The video touches on how the city has gone from a town that used to rely on the choo-choo to a metropolitan wonder that flies over fiber optic cables. Walter Cronkite called Chattanooga the "dirtiest city in America" but the network is transforming it into a technology capitol. Reporter Eleanor Beck focuses on the network's many customers and how they use their connections. Among those customers are an increasing number of businesses who seek the 1 gig service.

Beck spoke with Jack Studer, one of the founders of Lamp Post Group, a downtown incubator. Studer raved about the 1 gig network as a selling point to new businesses. Chattanooga's investment continues to fuel economic development and bring fresh entrepreneurs to town.

The story is a little under four minutes.

SEATOA Conference Set for March 21st-22nd

Posted February 1, 2013 by Lisa Gonzalez

This March 21-22, the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA) will be hosting the "Networking Communities for the New South" conference. The conference will be held at the Omni Charlotte Hotel.

We are excited to see Susan Crawford as the keynote speaker. From the conference page:

She will provide a broadband policy reality check, and answer – among other questions –whether current so-called “level playing field”, “free-market” policies are leaving us with a second class network that only the rich can afford.

(For a preview, listen to Susan in a recent Broadband Bits Podcast. She talked about her recent book and discussed the need for long term U.S. telecom policy change.)

Check out the schedule and list of other speakers [PDF] and start planning your itinerary. You can also register online.

Some of the issues discussed will be:

Public and private resources
How to offer services to schools and other government institutions as a way to save costs and yet build a platform for high bandwidth use
Info on the Research Triangle Park's North Carolina Next Generation Network, (NCNGN - sounds like NC Engine)
The National Public Safety FirstNET and municipal network
How to build, operate, and integrate social media into, local Public, Education and Government (PEG) channels, and into your organization's lobbying campaigns to obtain optimal reach

New Fact Sheet: Community Broadband and Public Savings

Posted November 29, 2012 by Lisa Gonzalez

We have already published a fact sheet on the critical role community broadband plays in job development. Now, ILSR presents a collection of how community owned broadband networks save money for local government, schools, and libraries while providing cutting edge services. The Public Savings Fact Sheet is now available.

Though schools, libraries, and other community anchors need access to faster, more reliable networks, the big cable and telephone companies have priced those services so high that they are breaking the budget. But when communities create their own connections, affordable high capacity connections are only one of the benefits. A community owned network offers the promise of self-determination -- of upgrades on the community's time table and increased reliability for emergency responders.

The Public Savings Fact Sheet is a great piece to share to mobilize other members of your community. Share it with decision makers and use it to start meaningful conversations. Distribute it widely and often.

We are always developing new resources. If you have an idea for a new fact sheet, we want to hear it.

Welcome to The Gigabit Club, BTES!

Posted November 29, 2012 by Lisa Gonzalez

Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) announced November 19th that it now has the capability to offer 1 Gbps service. While the BTES rates do not reflect a standard cost for the service yet, 1 Gbps is offered as an option to businesses and households.

From the BTES press release:

"Bristol now has one of the fastest, totally built out networks in the United States. To give an example of how fast, you can download about two hours of video or upwards of 200 songs in just six seconds," said Dr. Michael Browder, CEO of BTES. "For our residential customers, that means one person in the household can download a movie, while another is playing an online game, while another is watching an HDTV program – all without slowing down any of the activities. For our business customers, it opens the way for transporting and accessing 'big data', which is critical for economic development of the area."

The product is already being used by local students. A nearby elementary school is combining the 1 Gbps service with SMART Board Technology and participating in virtual field trips around the globe. Twenty eight-year-olds recently "visited" Egypt for a class on the pyramids with the help of an on-site pyramid tour guide. Gee, second grade was not all that memorable when I was a kid, but it sure would be these days!

We are always pleased to learn of significant strides made by municipal networks and want to thank Bernie Arnason from Telecompetitor for covering this story. We also want to congratulate BTES for their entry into the Gigabit Club!

Chattanooga Fiber Network Reduces Cost of Electricity to All Customers

Posted October 8, 2012 by Lisa Gonzalez

The Chattanooga Gig continues to benefit the community. We have covered some of the jobs that it has created, how it has lowered City expenditures and improved street lighting, and the recently announced speed increase without hiking rates. Now, EPB can also boast about how the network has significantly cut power costs.

Dave Flessner from the TimesFreePress.com reports that, thanks to fiber enabled smart grid technology, Chattanooga's electricity rates are 5 percent less than they would be without the network. From the article:

“The savings from the smart grid and the payments from the telecom division to our electric system are exceeding our costs and that is helping save money for every customer of EPB, whether you are signed up for any of our telecom services or not,” [EPB President Harold] DePriest told EPB directors Friday. “If we hadn’t made this investment, your electric bills would be higher.”

In addition to savings for every electric consumer, the network has been wildly successful for its video, phone, and Internet offerings. There are 40,000 users to EPB and its telecom division generates more profit than its 73-year old electricity utility. Chattanooga is ahead of the game:

EPB Chairman Joe Ferguson said the [American Reinvestment and Recvery Act] stimulus funds helped speed the installation of the smart grid network from the original plan of 10 years down to less than two years.

“We’re exceeding the goals we set in our business plan,” Ferguson said. “We’ve stayed ahead of schedule; we’ve stayed on budget, and the number of customers who have signed up is better than we expected. The acceptance has been huge and that’s where the revenue comes from that we can plow back into our business and help keep our electric rates down.”

Chattnooga is regularly visited by community leaders from around the country interested in finding out more about their network and how they created it. Obviously, word has gotten out about the many advantages to owning...

EPB Fiber Increases Residential Speeds at No Extra Cost

Posted September 18, 2012 by Lisa Gonzalez

Chattanooga's EPB Fiber just announced that current customers will receive a bump up in speed at no extra cost for its FI-Speed Internet service.

Residential customers on three separate tiers will automatically receive an increase in speed with no increase in price. The upgrade has already happened and customers can immediately take advantage of the new speeds.

According to an Ellis Smith article in the Chattanooga Times Press:

EPB, which offers gigabit fiber-optic Internet speeds across its Chattanooga service area, is upgrading customers to celebrate its third anniversary in the fiber-to-the-home market, said Harold DePriest, president and CEO.

“Enhancing our FI-Speed Internet was something we could do to celebrate, so we did it,” DePriest said.

This is the second time EPB has upgraded service to customers for free. In 2010, EPB upgraded 15 Mbps service to 30 Mbps service. Oh, and the prices haven't increased over the three years. Look back at your cable bills from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or others, and you'll likely find that rate increases outnumber speed boosts.

New speed (and old rates) look like this:

$57.99 - 30 Mbps symmetrical increases to 50 Mbps symmetrical

$69.99 - 50 Mbps symmetrical increases to 100 Mbps symmetrical

$139.99 - 100 Mbps symmetrical increases to 250 Mbps symmetrical

As an added bonus to cutomers on the 1 Gbps symmetrical tier, their rates will drop from $349.99 to $299.99.

Fierce Telecom's Sean Buckly shared some perspective on the change:

While major cable MSOs, including local operator Comcast, have been responding to the higher speed FTTH offerings made by the likes of Verizon and their 300 Mbps tier, it's clear cable's best offerings don't come close to what EPB can offer.

Comcast's 105/20 tier is priced at $115 per month plus the price of the modem rental, while Chattanooga EPB customers can get 250 Mbps symmetric service for $139.

EPB CEO Harold DePriest...

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