Chattanooga, TN becomes home to 1Gbps internet service - Beats Google

[Marc]

Chattanooga, TN becomes home to 1Gbps internet service

It may sound expensive, but when you break down the options, it's not. And there are tiers so you can pay less for less 'speed'.

Note that the project is essentially a government project. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is preparing to offer 1 Gigabit speeds at home. The city-owned utility announced today it will boost its broadband service to 1 Gigabit throughout its service territory by the end of 2010. Such a connection will be 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America and the fastest of any US city. Mr. DePriest of EPB does not expect brisk demand for the one-gigabit service anytime soon. So why offer it? "The simple answer is because we can," he said. And.... NO BANDWIDTH CAPS!!!!

Also note that the service is symmetrical, so upload speeds are the same as download speeds!

 

[Stijloor]

Chattanooga, TN becomes home to 1Gbps internet service

It may sound expensive, but when you break down the options, it's not. And there are tiers so you can pay less for less 'speed'.

Note that the project is essentially a government project. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is preparing to offer 1 Gigabit speeds at home. The city-owned utility announced today it will boost its broadband service to 1 Gigabit throughout its service territory by the end of 2010. Such a connection will be 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America and the fastest of any US city. Mr. DePriest of EPB does not expect brisk demand for the one-gigabit service anytime soon. So why offer it? "The simple answer is because we can," he said. And.... NO BANDWIDTH CAPS!!!!

Also note that the service is symmetrical, so upload speeds are the same as download speeds!

Any other locations around the world where this is available?

Stijloor.

 

[Marc]

I personally really can't say, Jan, but I think there is. I don't keep abreast of speeds in general. Where I live I only have 2 real options - Time Warner cable and DSL (slower than cable here) from the phone company. I have 2 Time Warner business connections for redundancy (they're each on their own IP block and are connected to different datacenters) and I get about 15Mbps down. If I had a 1Gbps connection and it was attached to a backbone I'd probably just run Elsmar.com on a server here at the house rather than pay Softlayer. Actually I'd prefer to be able to do that. But....

What surprised me was that after all the lobbying and crap by the biggies like Time Warner and Verizon who tried to kill the project (government competion was their complaint), EPBC won. Now there IS competition in Chattanooga. Watch the biggies try to continue to kill it. None of them can touch the speeds and prices EPBC is offering. Now - If we could get that type of competition in other cities going we'd have *real* options rather than just Company A or Company B (typically Time-Warner or Verizon).

 

[SteelMaiden]

Good for them, I hope it continues to catch on.

 

[Stijloor]

About time for more (affordable) choices and honest competition!

Stijloor.

 

[GStough]

This made the news here this week, and folks are excited about it. If it wouldn't make for such a long commute, heck, I'd seriously consider moving there!

 

[SteelMaiden]

This made the news here this week, and folks are excited about it. If it wouldn't make for such a long commute, heck, I'd seriously consider moving there!

Yeah, but think of the ride you'd get out of it! You know you want to.

 

[GStough]

Yeah, but think of the ride you'd get out of it! You know you want to.

I'm beginning to think about it....

Hmmm.....It IS an awesome ride up there and back! Lots of twisties....