While it's great to have gigabit internet service in Chattanooga, I wonder just how much of a competitive edge it gives us.   

According to news reports, gig service is available for $26-$48 in Hong Kong, $70 in Kansas City, and the bargain basement price of $350 in Chattanooga.  

If Mr. DePriest is anticipating throngs of cyberpreneurs tripping over themselves to locate here, I hope he doesn't turn blue from holding his breath. 

Jim Yarbrough
Chattanooga

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Where else is gig service available?  Little Chattanooga is one of the few places on the planet to offer this service and yet you still want to complain.  Comcast recently snidely remarked that EPB only has eight gigabit customers.  Guess how many gigabit customers Comcast has? 

The price for gig service is not set in stone.  I'm sure the folks are savvy enough to adjust their prices based on market demand. 

I'd rather be in Chattanooga, where there is a fiber system fully deployed, than any other city where they are behind the cutting edge. 

Frank Shepard

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Chattanoogans should be proud of all the wickedly smart folks in this town that are working together to continue to make Chattanooga a leading progressive community. The cost of a gig is, more or less, a chicken and egg debate. What should be remembered is that the visionary leadership of EPB has caused Chattanooga to propel itself into the 21st century in a way unlike any other community in the U.S. There are thousands of U.S. cities that are envious of the fiber/ smart grid that has been deployed in our community, proven by the fact that over 1,100 cities competed to be Google's first fiber community. 

To compare Google's "announced" prices in Kansas City (which are in fact still in construction  and will likely take another 2-3 years before being fully deployed) to EPB's prices is not a fair comparison. While Google is adopting an overall marketing strategy for a global company,  EPB has to follow a business model. EPB's 40,000+ customers have a minimum service of 30mbps symmetrical service, an astonishingly high connectivity that's faster than the vast majority of the rest of the world; the price for this service is extremely competitive. 

While there is almost no argument that the next generation of the internet will be super high speed networks, our community is very fortunate to be one of the leading cities of the world. As to the cost of a gig, as with almost all technological ventures, the cost will decrease as the demand increases. Hopefully, Chattanooga companies will be the leaders in creating this demand.

Ken Hays

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I am just curious as to why EPB has not engaged in honest advertising.  In several commercials EPB claims that their employees are the ones who are the ones you see in your local grocery store.  Are they suggesting that AT&T and Comcast employees commute each companies' home office each day?   

They are also bragging about the "Gig Tank" winners.  That's a great thing to brag about if they actually brought jobs to the Chattanooga area.  Instead they are giving the money away to companies that will likely never return to spend that money. Of the $160,000 that awarded in Chattanooga, how much of that money will be spent in Chattanooga? 

Calvin Richards