Just this week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski highlighted the success of Chattanooga at a speech at VOX Media and SBNation on Winning the Global Broadband Race. From his speech (the entire speech in PDF format is available here):
First, as we said in our National Broadband Plan, we need “innovation hubs” with ultra-fast broadband, with speed measured in gigabits, not megabits.
There have been some positive recent developments on this front.
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In Chattanooga, the community-owned utility installed a 100% fiber-to-the-premises network, making speeds up to 1 gigabit per second available to all businesses, residences, and institutions
Genachowski also commented on Chattanooga’s place in the competitive environment:
Promoting competition also means we need to keep a close eye on developments in places like Chattanooga and Kansas City to see what additional steps we can take to encourage game- changing investments by disruptive broadband competitors.
This is not the first time Chairman Genachowski has referred to municipal networks as a valuable asset. In his August comments on the Google Fiber roll-out, he referred to the importance of municipal infrastructure investments as a way to push the boundaries and compete globally.