When John “Thunder” Thornton began developing Jasper Mountain nearly a decade ago, the Chattanooga developer was unable to get local utilities to make the investment to extend either water service or high-speed internet up the mountain to his 8,893-acre residential project.
To entice retirees and other home buyers to his Jasper Highlands gated complex, Thornton built his own water service in 2012 and leased some of the dark fiber optic lines of the local electric co-op to connect with North Alabama Electric Cooperative in Stevenson, Alabama, to gain high-speed gigabit internet service in 2016.
“We’re property developers and homebuilders, but we knew in today’s world you have to have high-speed internet and quality utility service to attract the kind of homebuyers we have now brought to Jasper Highlands from 47 states and seven different countries,” Thornton said. “But we knew we didn’t want to be in the utility business forever.”
So last Friday, the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative took over Thornton’s Hi-Tech Data LLC with its SVEConnect high-speed broadband network, which the power co-op started 18 months ago after the Tennessee Legislature authorized such co-ops to get into the telecommunications business. Tennessee still forbids municipal utilities from stretching outside of their power delivery region, which blocked the original effort by Thornton to get Chattanooga’s EPB to bring its high-speed broadband to his Marion County project.
What Thornton bills as “Gig Mountain” has attracted a couple of hundred users on the Jasper Mountain, and officials with SVEConnect say they are glad to acquire the expanded customer base.