SubscribeWhile big cable and phone companies tell you that you don’t need fiber optic broadband speeds, EPB, a publicly-owned utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., thinks otherwise.
[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/EPB Network Feature 2-15-11.flv[/flv]
While you plod along with 3-10Mbps, learn more about Chattanooga’s 1Gbps broadband network delivering truly lightning-fast speeds today — right now — at an affordable price. What has your broadband provider done for you lately? (6 minutes)
(Thanks, as always, to Community Broadband Networks for another great video find.)
For what I pay for 24/3 with Uverse, I could get a 50/50 line in Chattanooga.
🙁
Meh I guess I can only wish.
Their 1Gbs service costs $350 per month. That is hardly affordable! Even their 100Mbs package is $140.
1Gbps symmetrical line for $350/month, IDK, doesn’t sound outrageous to me for that amount of bandwidth really. Even the 100Mbps doesn’t sound bad. Wasn’t FIOS and Comcast wanting more or about the same for half the bandwidth?
It’s absolutely affordable for a small business or web entrepreneur — the groups most likely to need that kind of speed. I’ve seen 3Mbps DSL service contracts that cost more than that for business customers. These plans aren’t actually intended for home residential customers. I probably wouldn’t find too many websites that would be able to deliver their content to me at those speeds. But if you are an institutional user like a school, or want to run a web server or some other high bandwidth business application for lots of people at the same time, these prices are dirt… Read more »
I believe the $350 is only for residential customers. They don’t list their business pricing (you have to call to get a price), but I would guess that it is more expensive than residential pricing.
As you said, 1Gbs service is likely overkill for a residential user. I’d even say that 100Mbs for upload is overkill for most residential users. Most of my data usage is down, unless I’m uploading photos and that doesn’t add up to much data-wise.
My company would pay $350/mo in an instant for several locations in town if 1Gb service was available for us. We currently pay about $650/mo for just a 3Mbit DSL line to our main business, and a 2Mb site to site link downtown to a remote site, plus a 1mbit/256kb residential DSL line. Not exactly blazing speeds given the large sums we pay. As Phillip said, unless you’re a company or a business professional working with large files or media that require that type of bandwidth with connections on the other end supporting that speed, 1Gb is overkill for a… Read more »
There’s so much potential for this to exist elsewhere. But in Pennsylvania, for example, municipalities are forbidden to start any communications services. It all has to be outsourced to a private company. Which is ridiculous considering you still have to buy upstream bandwidth from a private backbone company.