Chattanooga's community owned EPB Fiber Network continues to get positive reviews from subscribers in the local paper. And Comcast's customers continue to complain. The Times Free PressChattanoogan presents a tale of two providers.
The longer letter details the frustration in dealing with Comcast following the failure of their on-demand service. After Comcast didn't resolve the problem over the course of several phone calls, the subscriber was told she would have to pay $30 for a Comcast technician to come to their house, even if the problem was entirely caused by Comcast's network and/or equipment.
The second letter, from Leah, notes that she too suffered at the hands of Comcast's customer service but became EPB customers after a long absence from their home due to damage from the tornadoes of 2011. When they returned home, they went with the community network rather than Comcast.
This is how she reflects on her experience with EPB:
We have had one instance where we needed to contact customer service, and the problem was fixed quickly and easily by the most polite customer service rep I’ve ever dealt with.
Comcast came by recently to offer us a “substantial savings” if we’d make the switch back to them. My question was, why now? I was a customer for years and treated poorly as rates increased exponentially. Now the offer the discount? No thanks.
For the $5 extra per month that we pay for EPB, we receive better features, prompt and polite customer service, and an all around trouble free experience. Thanks EPB!
The SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors has its annual conference in Chattanooga this year - March 12 and 13th. The conference includes a tour of EPB's Gigabit network (the largest muni network in the nation) and its PEG operations.
The Georgia Senate is considering SB 313, a bill that would overrule local decision-making authority in matters of broadband. Even as connections to the Internet have become essential for communities, the Georgia Legislature is poised to make it harder for communities to get the networks they need.
Community networks spur competition -- it is why Chattanooga got Comcast's xfinity service before Atlanta, despite Atlanta having long been prioritized over Chattanooga previously. It is why Cox Cable, which is headquartered in Atlanta, launched its upgrades in Lafayette, Louisiana -- they felt the competition pressure from a community fiber network.
"The private sector is handling this exceptionally well," Rogers said. "What they don't need is for a governmental entity to come in and compete with them where these types of services already exist. We're not outlawing a local government entity from doing this, but if they're going to compete, they can play by the same rules and ask the voters if it's okay before they go out and spend all these dollars."
As for whether the private sector is providing enough competition or high enough capacity networks, I leave that to individual communities to decide.
SB 313 effectively removes such decisions from local communities. It purports to just set additional terms that the public sector must meet, but many of these terms are sufficiently onerous (especially when taken all together) that communities will not be able to build the network they need.
The bill first requires communities to ask the private sector to build the necessary network. This ignores the basic fact that community networks are operated with different incentives that privately owned networks. Due to the scarcity in the market, private providers tend to keep prices higher than necessary to maximize their short term profits. Publicly owned networks lower prices (while still paying their costs) in order to spur job creation and increase digital inclusion.
The bill requires communities to pass a referendum before building a network and requires inaccurate, damning language be included on the ballot. Broadband referendums tend to invite deep-pocketed incumbent providers to spend heavily to buy the votes necessary to stop competition - see the Longmont saga for an excellent example of how hard it is for a community to stand up to these big cable corporations.
Communities that somehow get this far are then subject to all the regulations as are private providers in addition to numerous additional regulations imposed on them by this legislation and their inherent duty to operate in an open and transparent manner. Despite being nonprofit, they are required to pay taxes and still face additional barriers that private operators do not.
They will be restricted in how they price their services and where they offer services in ways the private sector is not.
In short, this bill will make it all but impossible for communities to build networks -- even in areas that are presently unserved. The bill purports to exempt some unserved areas, but does so in a cynically evasive way. The only way a community could meet the unserved exemption is if it vowed to only build in the least economical areas -- meaning it would have to be significantly subsidized. Serving unserved areas and breaking even financially almost always requires building a network that will also cover some areas already served (because that is where you can find the margins that will cover the losses in higher expense areas).
The bill is presently in the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities committee. We will continue covering it and attempt to learn which interests are pushing to revoke local authority and replace it with what distant legislators think best.
Prior to Chattanooga's gigabit announcement, Amazon had no considered that region as a location for the distribution center they would looking to put in the southeastern U.S. But they saw the announcement, talked to the City and Boom! Over 1,000 jobs.
I've long known of this economic development example but did not fully appreciate how important access to the Internet is for an Amazonian Distribution Center. But this article about its coming expansion (more on that in bit) offers some context.
The distribution center is the size of 17 football fields and hosts 700 Internet access points connected by 7 miles of fiber-optic cables within the facility. So access to the Internet is pretty important for a distribution center of an online retailer.
When Amazon announced its investment in Chattanooga, it predicted some 1400 jobs with additional seasonal employment opportunities. After cutting back seasonal employees with the end of the holiday season, it was still employing 2000 workers.
With its expansion, it will add hundreds of jobs -- hundreds of jobs that would not be in Chattanooga without the community fiber network. Massive national providers like Comcast regularly claim they can deliver any level of service to big customers but the reality is that they are not willing to charge reasonable prices for such services and they are much harder to work with (partially because the bureaucracy at any massive cable corporation is worse than that of any local government).
The following news report suggests that some in Knoxville, Tennessee, are starting to get a little jealous of the incredible FTTH network built by Chattanooga's publicly owned electric company. A number of Knoxville businesses are finding it more convenient to expand and add jobs in Chattanooga, where access to the Internet is faster and more affordable due to public investments.
Knoxville is located 100 miles northeast of Chattanooga. And 100 miles to the northeast of Knoxville is Bristol, Virginia, which has also been seeing significant job gains as a result of its publicly owned fiber-optic network that stretches into most of southwestern Virginia. In short, Knoxville should start worrying about its future and broadband competitiveness.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press discusses the state of the economy in Hamilton County. They have seen impressive new jobs (credit to the EPB Fiber network) but some existing companies have had to continue downsizing in the weak economy. From the article:
Chattanooga’s high-speed Internet service already is showing some promise. The Knoxville-based Claris Networks, a cloud-based IT provider, recently acquired two Chattanooga IT companies — SRC Technology and Allied IT — and has expanded the staff in its Freight Depot office downtown to eight employees.
“Connectivity for us is about eight to 10 times cheaper in Chattanooga than it is in Knoxville and other cities,” said Dan Thompson, manager of advanced infrastructure service and product development for Claris. “We see a great potential for growth in Chattanooga.”
Interestingly, Knoxville's public power utility had previously considered a public investment in a fiber network but decided against it. Not every publicly owned utility can duplicate EPB's success in Chattanooga, but most could if they gave it the effort demanded of perhaps the most important piece of the future economy: fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet.
Chattanooga and other similar pioneers are incredibly open when others look to them for lessons. So places like Knoxville have a choice: sit back and watch as innovative industries move to innovative cities or invest in yourself.
There are definitely times when you learn of a business practice where you think, "Wow, my opinion of AT&T could not go any lower." And then, BOOM. You find out that AT&T was intentionally underfunding a 9-11 call center in order to undercut its competitors in bids.
Yikes.
Did we mention that this is not an isolated case? AT&T has been busted in several jurisdictions for this practice.
This practice allows it to undercut all competitors in the market, including the community fiber network run by Chattanooga's Electric Power Board. From the Times Free Press article:
The lawsuit claims that, since at least July 2001, AT&T has filed monthly and annual reports listing fewer business phone lines than they actually provide. Under Tennessee law, phone companies must pay $3 per month per line to pay for 911 access.
...
In a March phone service bid proposal for Hamilton County, AT&T stated it would not collect the $3 rate and instead collect $2 per line per month. That allowed the company to underbid the next lowest bidder by 69 cents per line per month, “unlawfully increasing its profits at the expense of revenue to support the critical emergency services that” 911 provided, according to court records.
A difference of $.69 may not seem like much, until you consider they may be providing 1,000 lines - which is a difference of $690/month or $8,280/year.
It is an incredible racket. AT&T gets more high-margin customers, pays less in fees than competitors, and the only people who get hurt are those who depend on 9-11.
Just when you think AT&T is brilliantly evil (an accusation I tend not to make against many corporations no matter how much I disapprove of their practices), you have to consider how incredibly incompetent they are. They freakin' including this fraudulent activity in a bid for county services!!!
AT&T has settled out of court with other counties in Tennessee and Madison County, Alabama, for similar pratices.
Remember folks, AT&T is one of the of companies on whom Congress, the President, and FCC, are expecting to invest in America to build the broadband networks we need and run them in a way that does not cripple our economy. That is not a plan, it is an abdication of responsibility.
Chattanooga's publicly owned EPBFi advanced broadband network has produced a series of testimonials from people that have switched to their services from the national incumbent providers. We recently wrote about the importance of documenting these stories and wanted to again highlight some of the videos they have produced and released.
Time and time again, we hear that the community fiber network delivers faster speeds, lower prices, higher reliability, and much, much better customer service.
Chattanooga, with the nation's fastest citywide broadband network, offers lessons to many other communities who have built or are building their own networks. Chattanooga is regarded as one of the most successful muni networks in terms of a smooth operation with good advertising and a great back office approach.
They are documenting (with video) the stories of both residents and businesses that have switched to their services from incumbents like AT&T and Comcast (two of the most powerful companies in the US). Below, we include two of our favorites in the series.
This should be an extremely effective form of advertising for community networks -- harnessing the enthusiasm and local attributes of the network. Making these videos available on sharing sites like Vimeo or YouTube allows supporters to embed them in their blogs and share with friends and family.
Quite frankly, these testimonials are not hard to do (hire a local videographer that has experience with lighting and recording good sound) and should be one of the first approaches used by community networks to spread the word. If local thought leaders and small business owners can participate, so much the better.
Chattanooga, with the nation's most impressive broadband network (stretching into rural areas even outside the metro), is spending $30 million to put a Wi-Fi wireless network on top of it. At present, it is primarily for municipal uses:
For now, city government plans to retain exclusive use of the network for municipal agencies as it tests it with applications including Navy SEAL-esque head-mounted cameras that feed live video to police headquarters, traffic lights that can be automatically adjusted at rush hour, and even water contamination sensors that call home if there’s a problem beneath the surface of the Tennessee River.
Much of the wireless network is being funded by state and federal grants -- Chattanooga is turning itself into a test bed for the future city, at least for communities that recognize the benefits of owning their own infrastructure. Chattanooga can do what it wants to, it does not have to ask permission from Comcast or AT&T.
The goal for the city’s wireless network is to make the entire city more efficient and sustainable, said David Crockett, director of Chattanooga’s Office of Sustainability.
As Bernie Arnason notes at Telecompetitor, Wi-Fi is increasingly needed by smartphones because the big cellular networks cannot handle the load. The future has wireless components, but without Wi-Fi backhauled by fiber-optics, the future will be extremely slow and unreliable -- traffic jams for smartphones.
A more recent story from the Times Free Press notes that Chattanooga is wrestling with how to handle opening the network to residential and business use.
“I want to be innovative,” he said. “I want to do more than just turn it on in the parks.”
It’s a popular idea with technologists, tourism officials and the general public, who would gain the ability to surf around the city at speeds greater than typical cellular speeds.
Bob Doak, president and CEO of the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said allowing tourists to log onto the Internet via Wi-Fi “would be tremendous.
Unfortuately, state laws designed to "protect" some of the most powerful corporations in America, AT&T and Comcast, have limited the utility's options when it comes to offering services to the public.
The reason it’s a legal gray area, according to Tennessee state Sen. Bo Watson, is due to a legally “defined service area” that grants companies such as AT&T, Comcast and EPB specific regions and defines the capabilities they can offer.
Comcast and AT&T have proved incredibly powerful in the Tennessee Legislature, preventing any efforts to encourage more competition among broadband providers in the state by loosening restrictions on public entities to invest in their own networks. In the courts, where they have to argue on a level playing field with opponents (checking their unrivaled lobbying clout at the door), they have done much worse -- losing lawsuit after lawsuit intended to disrupt publicly owned networks.
All of us who want access to better broadband networks have to make sure our elected officials are voting for community needs, rather than for increased profits for Comcast and AT&T.
For those who want to learn more about the history of Chattanooga's incredible network, a good start is this interview with Craig Settles on Gigabit Nation.
With this wireless overlay, Chattanooga could have an incredible connected future - where anyone can get a great connection to the Internet anywhere in the city from a network that is designed top-to-bottom with the idea of maxmizing benefits to all -- businesses and residents alike.
I remain concerned that when cities and local governments are prohibited from investing directly in their own broadband networks, citizens may be denied the opportunity to connect with their nation and improve their lives. Local economies will suffer as a result, and the communities’ ability to effectively address education, health, public safety, and other social issues will be severely hampered. ... I fear that preventing local governments from investing in broadband is counter-productive and will impede the nation from accomplishing the Plan’s goal of providing broadband access to every American and community anchor institution.
