Bringing high-speed internet to small-town America

In last week's Staying Connected, we explored just a few of the many small towns with high-tech priorities. One of those towns featured was Chattanooga, Tennessee, which currently boasts the fastest internet speeds in the United States.

How did a town of just under 200,000 people achieve such a distinction in a day when internet broadband speed is so competitive and precious? We went to the source to find out.

The Electric Power Board (EPB) is the city's power utility company, providing that service since 1939. But it's the EPB's recent venture into fiber optic broadband technology and a revolutionary Smart Grid network that really put them on the map. We sat down with Lacie Newton, EPB's Public Relations Supervisor, to answer some questions about the process.

Tecca: Run us through the approval process. How did Chattanooga become the first city in the United States to get full gigabit broadband? 

Lacie Newton: Our board of directors and executive team began discussing the benefits that a fiber optics network would provide for our electric system in 1996. This was the basis for our Smart Grid that we are building now, which is 100% fiber optics. Among the many benefits of a Smart Grid with a next-generation communications backbone is the ability to provide advanced communications services to our customers. So we started the process with emphasis on community feedback. 

This grassroots-type approach helped us start conversations with our customers and community members, which resulted in positive feedback once we began the approval process. So really, we wanted approval from our customers and community first. We held a public hearing, took our plan to our board of directors, then city council, and finally the state comptroller. But first and foremost, as a community-owned company, our number one priority is our customers, and they told us time and again that they want us to provide them with this critical infrastructure.

How has the response been so far? Can you give any numbers on the percentage of customers who have switched over to the fiber optic broadband service since it started? 

We are ahead of our business plan projections for this time frame. Since our launch last September (2009), we have signed up 18,873 homes to our EPB fiber optics services. That is a 15.45% take rate. Our goal is a 35% take rate, and we believe we will reach that in 2 years. Of our EPB fiber optics customers, 81% are receiving our Fi-Speed internet service. We are still building out fiber optics as well, and our entire 600-square-mile customer service area will have access to these advanced services by the end of the this year (2010).

What interests us most about this is the fact that Chattanooga is not considered a large city, and the service is said to be available to "EPB’s 600-square-mile, 9-county service area." This means there are potentially farmers out there in rural southeastern Tennessee with faster internet speeds than someone in a downtown Los Angeles luxury apartment. Is that correct? 

Yes, this is correct, and we believe that the rural piece of our deployment is one of the most important aspects of our fiber optic initiative.

Do you see a future for higher internet speeds in small towns and rural areas, in addition to larger cities?

Absolutely. We believe more and more communities will begin to look at access to next-generation broadband speeds as critical in all areas, but particularly in rural areas that have been traditionally overlooked — especially when you consider the education, healthcare, and economic opportunities that an advanced communication infrastructure makes possible.

I think we can all agree that investing in our broadband future is important. Does EPB plan to stay on top of these broadband trends?

Yes — in fact, that's an important reason we built a 100% fiber optics infrastructure. With virtually unlimited bandwidth, our network is built with the future in mind. We will be able to add new applications that we can't even imagine today.    

Aside from the obvious speed, what other advantages does a fiber optic network have over cable or DSL?

Virtually unlimited bandwidth that will not only give benefits now, but well into the future. We know that a  100% fiber optics network will grow with us, no matter what the future holds.

Thank you for your time!

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