Chattanooga Shows What a Gigabit Network Can Do

gigaom.com — Two days in Chattanooga, Tenn. show how a municipal broadband network can pay dividends when community leaders focus on the applications a gigabit network can deliver and consider the long-term economic development potential. And yes, it can even generate enough revenue to become profitable. May 30, 2011 View in Crawl 4

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Chattanooga Shows What a Gigabit Network Can Do

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vitriolandangst May 31, 2011

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It's not all that expensive for a city, and it has been successfully tried many times.

YES, once you can guarantee EVERYONE can access services of the government and interact online -- you can save money by de-locating offices, and such.

But in every case, it gets shut down by the internet service providers and cable outfits. They want to charge people for the same pipe over and over again.

They pay NOTHING for the content you get that is created by other people and companies - the VALUE ISPs bring is merely turning on the spigot to someone else's stream. Sure there is some investment -- but as you can see in this and countless other COMMUNITY-based ISP networks -- it's a fraction of what you pay commercially.