Chattnooga Mayor Andy BerkeChattanooga gained national attention Sunday night for its high-speed Internet service, which National Public Radio heralded as the fastest in the country and 100 times faster than the broadband service in most cities.
In a report on NPR’s flagship news program “All Things Considered,” Mayor Andy Berke said the gigabit-per-second broadband service offered by Chattanooga’s EPB is an investment in the future, when more businesses will need even faster data and video connections via the Internet.
“I tell people all the time that you don’t need gigabit-per-second technology to load ESPN.com faster,” Berke quipped during an interview that aired Sunday night. “But we’re starting to see companies who are looking at us, coming here and making decisions, understanding that they will need more capacity in the future and Chattanooga has that today.”
Chattanooga’s high-speed Internet helped propel the development of Quickcue, an online restaurant reservation company which recently was sold for $11.5 million.
But the NPR report noted that installing the fiber optic grid in the self-proclaimed “Gig City” came at a cost: EPB invested nearly $300 million to build its fiber optic network and more than a third of that investment was paid from a federal grant.