Tag: "tennessee"

Knoxville Downtown Wondering 'Where Is All the Broadband?'

Posted July 1, 2013 by Lisa Gonzalez

Knoxville Metro Pulse reporter Paige Hunton published a story last month about a common complaint from downtown residents and businesses - "Downtown Knoxville's Internet Access Kinda Sucks. Can It Be Fixed?" The problem worked its way from local talk to twitter and city leaders have met with residents and business owners to publicly discuss options.

This is a perfect example of what happens to a community that refuses to take responsibility for ensuring local businesses and residents have access to the essential infrastructure they need. Knoxville's approach to improving its Internet access is akin to crossing one's fingers and hoping really hard for the best.

Hunton' describes modern day disaster in the downtown area comprised of an inconsistent patchwork of AT&T DSL, Comcast, and a very limited amount of private provider fiber optics. Some areas have no access, others have no choices. While the city tries to encourage downtown commerce with tax credits for developers and a new entrepreneur center critical high-speed connections are missing.

City officials say the downtown area has a limited amount of aging conduit, discouraging private providers and cost prohibitive to expand. Likewise, old buildings with substandard internal wiring discourage investment from private companies.

Hunton tells the story of Ian Blackburn, a former colleague that now works for a downtown employer impacted by the lack of high-speed broadband downtown. After outgrowing its T1, the company went with 6 Mbps through AT&T DSL. AC Entertainment soon outgrew DSL:

"On one occasion in our DSL days, we had to download a video spot from an artist management site, make a few edits, burn it to disc, and get it to FedEx that day. The browser was estimating over an hour remaining for the download, which would miss the FedEx cutoff point. I remotely logged into a server in my living room, started the download, jumped on my bike, pedaled home, burned the file to a DVD, and was back in the office inside of 20 minutes,” he says. “The problem got solved, but that’s a ridiculous way for a company to have to operate. You can’t do business if you can outrun your Internet on a bicycle.”

...

Catching Up on Clarksville - Community Broadband Bits Episode #51

Posted June 18, 2013 by Christopher Mitchell

Clarksville is the fifth largest city in the state but was among the first networks in nation to offer symmetrical fast connections with a 10 Mbps basic offering when it launched. Christy Batts, Broadband Division Manager of Clarksville Department of Electricity, joins us to share some of the lessons learned and successes from Clarksville, which is now offering a gigabit everywhere in the community.

Clarksville has a significant population attached to a military base, which results in significant churn - meaning frequent connect and disconnect requests. High churn is costly to utilities. But having its own fiber network helps to keep costs lower for other utility services as well as benefiting the community.

However, Clarksville also had some difficulties that led to a large change in management. Though the network has not been subsidized in any way, it is only now on track to be where the utility wants it to be financially.

And finally, Christy Batts offers some thoughts on how to engage a local Chamber of Commerce.

Read the transcript from our discussion here.

This show is 25 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 Eat at Joe's for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

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!

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