For four years, we have been the largest American city to have a community-wide fiber network. Now, we’ve made the fastest Internet even more accessible.
For four years, we have been the largest American city to have a community-wide fiber network. Now, we’ve made the fastest Internet even more accessible.
As a surprise to our customers, we automatically increased their speed – whether residential or business customers, whether schools or community organizations. In September 2013, our slowest speed (if it can be called ‘slow’), became 100 Mbps, while average download speed in the country remains around 7 Mbps.
The thousands of customers who had already signed up for our 100 Mbps package were upgraded to a full gig, 1,000 Mbps, giving Chattanooga the country’s highest concentration of gig users. Homes, tech startups, communications companies, and corporate leaders suddenly found themselves with a gig of bandwidth – and have already begun to explore what it means to combine EPB’s legendary quality of service with unprecedented symmetrical upload and download speeds.
What prompted such a move? The goal goes deeper than to help position our fiber business for continued success, it is also to help our community do the same. Creating new opportunities and sustainable success for people in urban, suburban, and rural settings throughout our entire service area.
In the past year, municipal utilities, government officials, and private corporations have visited EPB from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Ireland and Brazil, as well as from around the country. In each situation, they are looking to Chattanooga as a model for how to bring the benefits of fiber to both the electric system and communications.
Around the world, EPB is getting a reputation – when we talk about enhancing quality of life in our community, we mean it.
Leading up to the day we upgraded, a number of our departments and divisions were working in tandem, under the radar. For the residential upgrades, our field services teams replaced equipment at every home that was going to get a gig. The original units that we installed had a capability of up to 400 Mbps, but in the time since, a next generation version has come out with two gig ports inside.
The commercial side was more complex. A number of our longest-standing business customers were on our Wave 7 legacy network, from when we first installed fiber optics in the downtown area. Leading up to the speed increase, we transitioned every business customer to our new network. Offering the highest bandwidth available, private network capabilities, and more – all backed by the customer service that local companies have come to expect from EPB.
Meanwhile, our marketing group was making changes to the website and marketing messages, Provisioning was making changes to templates, and all of the billing was being changed. All working together, all under the radar – so when the day came, we could transition everything overnight, so there would be no negative impact on customers’ service. So when they logged on that morning, the only surprise they had was an exponentially faster connection.