How a Mid-Sized Tennessee Town Took on Comcast, Revived Its Economy and Did it With Socialism

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/03/04/how-a-mid-sized-tennessee-town-took-on-comcast-revived-its-economy-and-did-it-with-socialism/

Even after the FCC voted to uphold net neutrality and classify internet as a public utility, it’s still expected that Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner will be approved by the end of this month, with “company-specific” regulations. This would likely mean that most Americans, who either only have Comcast or Time Warner cable in their area, will be stuck dealing with the same company that treats them like dirt. 74 percent of Americans surveyed by the Consumer Reports National Research Center feared higher prices, and 66 percent feared poorer customer service. And as the potential Comcast-Time Warner megacorporation is allowed to grow larger, expect it to gobble up the smaller remaining cable providers to become the only game in town for the rest of America.

However, by providing municipal broadband internet to residents, Chattanooga, Tennessee, has shown America the best way to beat back Comcast, even if the merger goes through.

In 2008, Chattanooga formed the Electric Power Board, which is a public utility company owned by the city’s taxpayers. The EPB got right to work building a “smart grid” to better service the city’s power needs in the event of outages, and to provide super-fast, fiber-optic internet to everyone in the city, which launched in September of 2009. Since its launch, the EPB’s network has proven to be 50 times faster than the average American’s internet connection, delivering 1 gigabit of information per second. A 2-hour video that normally takes 25 minutes to download on a regular broadband network would only take 33 seconds to download on Chattanooga’s network. And like other cable providers, EPB offers TV, internet, and phone service as a bundle, and for less than Comcast charges.

Naturally, Comcast and other privately-owned cable companies tried to sue Chattanooga for daring to compete with them. But with the help of a $111 million grant from President Obama’s federal stimulus package, The EPB was formed out of necessity – city officials figured that if Comcast was the only game in town, they would have little incentive to invest money in beefing up its infrastructure to provide reliable service and faster internet to customers. In fact, Verizon FiOs already said it would stop building out its network in 2013.

“It just didn’t look like the private sector was going to bring true, high-speed connectivity to this market,” EPB spokeswoman Danna Bailey told CNN Money.

Now, Chattanooga’s investment in fast internet infrastructure is paying big economic dividends. NerdWallet rated Chattanooga the 6th best city for economic growth for 2009 to 2012, the years immediately following its decision to invest in high-speed public broadband network. In that same time frame, median household income in Chattanooga grew by 13.5 percent and home values increased by 14 percent. This growth happened despite cruel austerity measures imposed by Tennessee’s right-wing state government that resulted in roughly 3,000 jobs lost in the government and construction sectors. However, new businesses are rapidly locating to Chattanooga, eager to capitalize on the fastest internet in the United States.