For most of his 75 years, Bob Howard has gotten telephone service from AT&T, electricity from EPB and cable television from Comcast or its business predecessors.
But the retired Hixson homeowner cut the cords with Ma Bell and Comcast this week to connect with EPB’s growing fiber-optic network for television, phone and Internet in a bundled service.
“We weren’t eager to be the first ones to try out a new service, but after some friends of ours kept telling us how much faster their Internet was and how clear their television signal was, we decided to go with EPB’s package,” Mr. Howard said Friday.
The EPB Tri-Fi bundle may not save Mr. Howard much money on his telecom services overall, “but we really like the service,” he said.
Mr. Howard is among more than 12,300 customers who have signed up for EPB’s fiber-optic service since the city-owned utility launched its residential video, phone and Internet services last September. At a pace of nearly 500 new subscribers a week, EPB expects to have more than 20,000 video, phone or Internet customers by the end of the year.
That could potentially rob nearly $20 million in annual business from Comcast and AT&T. Those loses will triple if EPB meets its goal of getting from 35 to 50 percent of the market within three years.
“We’re four to five months ahead of our plan and continue to enjoy very strong acceptance,” said Katie Espeseth, the EPB vice president in charge of the utility’s fiber optic service.
EPB is adding to its current 119 installers to speed installation of new customers, which has been delayed up to three weeks because of a recent surge in new orders, Ms. Espeseth said.
But the rival telecoms are making their own investments to retain and grow their business.
Comcast, which is both the national and regional leader in providing video services, continues to upgrade its video services, expand its leading library of on-demand movies and increase the speed of its Internet connections, officials said. Comcast is also offering lower initial rates to new customers than EPB.
“We are fast approaching 100 high-definition channels for our customers and offer Internet speeds of up to 105 megabits per second,” said Laurie Shipley, public affairs manager for Comcast in Chattanooga. “We recently launched our AnyRoom DVR service and we are proud to offer, exclusively, our Universal Caller ID, where our customers can view incoming telephone calls through their television, caller ID or computer.”
For its part, AT&T plans to soon launch its Internet-protocol video service known as U-verse in Chattanooga. AT&T brags that U-verse will offer the most interactive functions with its TV service.
EPB said its average customer is spending $105 a month on fiber-optic services, with 88 percent signing up for cable or video, 77 percent subscribing to the Internet and 53 percent signing up for voice phone service.