EPB CEO David Wade speaks at the event. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga unveiled its new 100 kilowatt, 4-hour, vanadium redox flow battery made by UniEnergy Technologies of Mukilteo, Washington on September 22, 2017.Chattanooga’s electric utility is increasingly living on a high-fiber diet.
Less than a decade after launching its telecommunications business, EPB expects to reach 100,000 customers of its fiber optic services by this fall – nearly triple what EPB initially forecast for the service when it was launched in 2009.
The city-owned electric utility, which added telephone, internet and video services using the same fiber optic network needed for its smart electric grid, has now captured nearly two-thirds of all of its customers with at least one of its telecommunications services. EPB Fiber Optics has signed up more than than 97,500 customers with its ultra-fast fiber optic telecom service in what it proclaims as “Gig City.”
By October, EPB expects to top 100,000 telecom customers on its way toward projected revenues in fiscal 2018-2019 of $169.1 million in its telecom division. When EPB began, it estimated 35,000 of its customers would subscribe to EPB’s internet, video or telephone services, which competes for customers with satellite providers and other internet service providers such as Comcast and AT&T.
“When we launched this service, we all took a big gulp when we made the decision to issue nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in debt to start this service even though we had had no debt at all at EPB for so many years,” EPB Chairman Joe Ferguson said. “But we were convinced it was the right thing to do for our community and I think our results have shown the wisdom of what we did.”