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Thursday 28 July 2011

Chattanooga gets IT - shows UK up.


As some of you may know, I have been evangelising what is going on in Chattanooga for rather a long time - years rather than months. And it's not just me who gets the train analogy. Yesterday evening, in case you missed it, Jim Ingraham of EPB in Chattanooga was interviewed on Gigabit Nation's inaugural broadcast for all to hear precisely why people like myself believe that a smart grid Chattanooga/LUS Fibre/joined up solution is the way forward. And will always be infinitely better than half-assed solutions such as FTTC or the unproven/disproven ideas of far too many of those who appear to end up as bidders in the procurement process.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



All I can say is that if you cannot afford the time to listen to this interview, you should abscond yourself from any responsibility for or opinions about what Digital Britain needs.

Thank you, once again, to all those I met in the USA last year for being leading lights for FTTH.

5 comments:

PhilT said...

Are you talking to United Utilities and the like ?

This is an example of a US localised public utility (something we simply don't have) using public funding (something we would find challenging with EU State Aid rules). Does it transfer well ?

$140/month for 100M symmetrical fibre broadband standalone, $58/month for 30M. Plus taxes and fees.

Somerset said...

Not everyone gets 1G (12! bought so far), standard product seems to be 30M with TV. 1G interfaces are 'standard' now.

So in the UK FTTC would be the equivalent as the vast majority will have no need for more.

Very different environment to the UK, how could it work here?

Smart grids for meter reading and appliance control need minimal bandwidth. 50% of their homes use wireless for this.

What's inspiring about this, just needs some funding...

Somerset said...

How would this type of scheme be funded and get customers in the UK?

Typical packages are 30M plus TV so are similar to VM.

PhilT said...

Having listened to it twice, and done some Googling, this is best described as your local electricity distribution company deciding to get into broadband supply via fibre.

Our DNO companies are somewhat bigger than the US single city / county "community" or "co-op" electric operators. https://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/AboutElectricity/DistributionCompanies/

Chattanooga's EPB is a big company with several hundred million dollar revenue, Chattanooga's population is similar to Dundee or Swindon (who coincidentally have made attempts at council broadband themselves).

Somerset said...

Would be interesting to see some replies to the comments!