[digdugdirk]

Chattanooga Tennessee, for those curious but not curious enough to read the article.

I'm intrigued by the city's push for this community co-op high speed internet - does anyone here have any experience with how the city has changed before/after the "gig-city" push? And did pandemic work from home change/accelerate things at all?

[ThunderSizzle]

It started out to build a smart power grid, and I can say it did that pretty well. The network was able to automatically re-routr power to decrease outages substantially during storms without requiring crews to fix it.

Most people I know converted pretty quickly to EPB from Comcast, but apartments and HOAs still make contracts for exclusive Comcast wiring, even brand new HOAs that are being built.

My understanding is Comcast significantly improved in the Chattanooga area to compete, but I never went back and will never move to an area where I have to use Comcast again.

The best part about EPB was that they will service any house within their service area - for no crazy cost. I think initial setup was sometimes either completely waived or less than $100, no matter the house.

Also, the billing is nice - when they say $70 - it's $70 - no extra taxes or fees on top of that like most telecoms and utilities do.

As for actual changes - the city failed to truly capitalize on having a gig network. We wasted millions of dollars on a city-wide wifi system that was never turned on, due to political reasons (thr decision maker saw poor performance and shut it down after $300 million was already wasted putting up routers across the city.

The push I expected was smarter stoplights and traffic management, but that never happened. If anything it got worse.

[71a54xd]

I'm still stunned there isn't a unified service that can tell you WHERE FIBER IS AVAILABLE BY ADDRESS throughout the country or just in specific cities. Even Google Fiber's dedicated map is horrible and incredibly annoying to grok.

Literally, has anyone at this address had a FTTH connection installed? I'd even pay $12/mo or a one time fee to check. So it sounds like Chattanooga apts likely won't have support anytime soon?

[ThunderSizzle]

You have to shop around. I lived in apartments that allowed either, and I've come across plenty that are still Comcast only.

The ones that let EPB in tend to advertise it more since so many apartments still do lock in.

One apartment would let you wire EPB, but you still had to pay Comcast a fee as part of rent. Super messed up.

[sarchertech]

EPB ran about 25 Ethernet drops throughout my new house for free.

[jcutrell]

I have been here for a while, in the earliest days of the gig there was a mini-rush of startups to Chatt. Low cost of living, relatively small/quiet city, access to basically all major southern cities (barring southern Florida) by either a quick flight or couple hour drive… makes sense that it just works out nicely.

I live about 20mi out from town, in a relatively rural area, and we still get excellent 1Gbps here. They wired as many drops as I asked for when we built here. It’s like a dream for a remote worker.

The city still has presence from some startups (I’m a bit out of the loop on who all is here), and I’ve known quite a few remote engineers who have lived in the area as well. Not sure how much this differs from an alternate universe where Comcast rules the land.

EPB is excellent all around. Service is incredibly consistent, it’s a bill I happily pay every month.

[marviel]

Had to move away for work -- but in my experience, the city has successfully reinvented itself and is now one of the most desirable places to live in the south.