Category Archives: The Industry

Financial Limitations on Growth

I’ve worked with rural counties across the country, and one of most common recurring themes is a hope from elected officials that local ISPs will step up and build fiber and solve the broadband gaps in the area. County officials often beg local ISPs to pursue grant funding. Far too many times, local ISPs are unable to expand to provide what they are being asked to do.

Only rarely have I ever heard a small ISP admit to local leaders the real reason it can’t solve the broadband gaps. The primary reason that ISPs can’t expand at will is the natural limits on financing for growth. I can’t recall ever hearing an ISP tell a County government that they are unable to borrow the needed funding. I think this is because they think it will diminish them in the eyes of the local officials and make them sound like a small business.

The market reality is that every ISP has a ceiling on the amount of money it can borrow. This limit is not set by the ISP – it’s set by lenders. I’ve often been asked by ISPs to quantify their borrowing limit, but it’s never an easy question to answer. When banks make loans, they look at obvious things like the ability of cash flow to cover debt payments, and at the ratio of debt and equity at a given business. There are also a lot more subtle issues involved in the decision for a bank to make loan, like the bank’s own overall equity and cash holdings, the national trend of interest rates, and the lender’s mix of different types of loans. Just like an ISP doesn’t want to publicly disclose its ability to borrow, banks rarely tell an ISP the real reasons they don’t qualify for a loan.

County officials often assume that it’s easier to find the needed funding if part of a project is funded by a grant. If anything, grant funding can make it harder to borrow, because the borrower has to satisfy the future requirements of the grant agency as well as the requirements of the bank.

This problem is not unique to ISPs, and every kind of business has a natural borrowing limit, just like every family has a limit on the amount of money they can borrow to buy a new home. We tend to think that broadband expansion projects are different because they are loans to build long-term infrastructure, but building a broadband network is not a lot different than building a new factory or a new retail location.

One unique category of ISP is startups. These are new ISPs, or ones that have only a few customers. With rare exceptions, new ISPs are unable to get loans until they have somehow self-funded enough to reach a size and a balance sheet that a bank will even consider.

Having a natural borrowing limit is not unique to small ISPs. Altice, which recently rebranded to Optimum, is in financial hot water because it looks like it is facing a huge challenge to refinance its outstanding debt that is coming due in a large balloon payment. One of the factors that convinced EchoStar to abandon the facility-based cellular business was the challenge of borrowing more to meet its existing debt payments.

The only realistic alternative to borrowing for most ISPs is to accept equity funding. Small ISP owners are generally reluctant to accept equity because it means giving up control of the business. One of the biggest benefits of being a small ISP is that the owners can carve their own path and do things their own way. That freedom quickly ceases when an ISP accepts any significant equity funding.

I guess the bottom line of this discussion is that communities have to have a realistic expectation for small ISPs in the area. These companies would probably love to expand and serve everybody, and if they are not doing so, there is a good chance that they can’t raise the funding needed to expand. Very few ISPs are going to say this in public, but don’t read the fact that they won’t expand to mean they wouldn’t love to.

A Three Nines World?

FierceNetwork recently published a thought-provoking article by Steve Saunders that asks, “is four nines the new five nines?”  That’s a question that only network engineers will understand, but it is a shorthand way to talk about the reliability of our networks.

The phrase five nines refers to having a goal for a network to be in service 99.999% of the time. That’s an incredible level of uptime, and a five nines network is expected to not be out of service more than five minutes in a year. A four nines network would have the goal of not being out of service more than 53 minutes per year, and three nines would lower the goal to 526 minutes, or just under nine hours per year.

I have a lot of clients who have signed contracts with large data customers to meet four or five nines of reliability. The only way to make that guarantee is to have a lot of redundancy. That would mean physically redundant fiber routes to protect against fiber cuts. It would mean self-healing electronics that quickly adapt to fiber outages or the loss of a key set of electronics. It means having software that can quickly be reset as needed.

In the last few years, we’ve seen network outages of major proportions. The latest outage by Verizon knocked a lot of customers out for half a day. There have been multiple regional and national outages due to problems in the Amazon AWS data centers. The breadth and magnitude of these regional outages is making it hard for any ISP to guarantee that networks will be reliable due to problems cause upstream by larger industry players.

As Saunders points out, the culprit of most of the big outages is software. The software that controls the Internet has grown increasingly complex. Sanders says the communications networks have grown as complex as the systems that operate a nuclear submarine.

The article points to the complexity associated with the recent big Verizon outage. The problem was something that affected the standalone 5G core network. Verizon’s core network includes electronics and software from five vendors  – Case Systems, Ericsson, Nokia, Oracle, and Red Hat / OpenShift. – along with Verizon’s own software.

Saunders says the issue is structural. While Verizon network engineers are elite, they are expected to operate networks that have grown to a level of complexity that is beyond the ability of technicians to fully understand everything. I’m sure Verizon still has an internal goal of five nines, but the company can no longer realistically understand the complexity of its network and the interplay of the many diverse components.

The problems and the outages are likely to grow worse as we continue to convert to software-defined networks, and as big companies consolidate network operations and eliminate technicians as a cost savings. We are also increasingly using AI to write complex software, which is reducing our ability to fully understand and debug problems during a crisis.

Saunders points to another issue, which is the erosion of the separation between LAN and WAN. For decades, businesses have been secure behind firewalls since they ran different software inside the company than what was used to communicate outside the company. But that distinction has become blurred as a lot of software now reaches across that barrier.

The article’s conclusion is that we are probably going to have to learn to live with big outages. The day of expecting to be connected to super-safe networks is gone. The Verizon outage shows that we might already be living in a three nines world, something that makes every network engineer cringe.

Winning the 6G Race

In December, the White House issued a short Presidential Memorandum titled “Winning the 6G Race”. The document states that 6G technology will be “foundational to the national security, foreign policy, and economic prosperity of the United States. 6G will play a “pivotal role in the development and adoption of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and implantable technologies. 6G will also provide faster, more resilient, and more secure communication networks that can be utilized for national security and public safety purposes.”

The report begins with an interesting statement, “It is the policy of the United States to lead the world in 6G development.” This memorandum suggests that the path for the U.S. to achieve this goal is to play a significant role in the development of international standards and to identify a significant volume of spectrum that can be harmonized for 6G networks internationally.

The memorandum goes on to direct several federal agencies to make sure the U.S. gets involved in the development of standards. This is something that U.S. scientists and engineers routinely participate in. Congress already ordered the FCC to begin looking for 800 MHz of midrange spectrum to put to auction. This is the sweet spot for cellular traffic, and it seems likely that cellular companies will buy most of any such spectrum that hits an auction.

What I find most interesting about the memorandum is the use of the phrase ‘6G Race’. This brings back memories of the same rhetoric being used to tout the introduction of 5G. In looking back, I see that the term 5G race entered the vernacular in 2018. It was a phrase introduced by the big cellular carriers as part of a massive lobbying campaign to get the FCC to hold auctions for cellular spectrum. The 5G race was supposedly between the U.S. and China to become the leader in 5G technology.

The lobbying effort was intense, and you couldn’t go to any sizable industry event without being bombarded by discussions about the U.S. winning the 5G race. I wrote several blogs on the topic at the time, and there were articles in the industry press about the 5G race on a weekly basis. This reached such a fever pitch that by 2020, there was talk of the U.S. government buying either Nokia or Ericsson so that the U.S. would own a 5G company.

What’s funny is that there was no 5G race then, and there is no 6G race now. That’s not how technology advances. For both 5G and 6G, scientists and engineers from around the world first create the standards for a new technology. Once those standards are published, vendors begin seriously developing marketable technologies to sell.

Every vendor strives to make technology that meets the standards so that it can be used worldwide. Vendors like Huawei from China and Nokia from Finland want the cellular technology they develop to be able to communicate with cellphones manufactured around the world. While there are differences between vendors, the differences are fairly minor, and over time, any development touted by any one vendor will be picked up by the other vendors. The whole purpose of standards is to make sure that a new technology is compatible around the world.

What’s particularly funny is that the U.S. is a minor player in the development of cellular technologies. The vendors ultimately decide which features of a new technology get stressed and developed first. If there were a 5G or 6G race, it would be between China and Europe – but I’ve never seen competition between the vendors referred to as a race.

I think the term 6G race is just more rhetoric from the marketing folks at the big U.S. cellular carriers. While they already won half of the battle by getting Congress to require that the FCC find more cellular spectrum, the lobbying effort is to make sure that happens in a timely manner before Congress or the FCC has a change of heart.

So, in case you are late to the game, welcome to the 6G race. It’s a drama-free race, and there is no finish line. But if the cellular companies get what they are asking for, the phrase will disappear as quickly as it appeared.

California Competition Study

The Public Advocates Office, which is part of the California Public Service Commission, undertook a a deep analysis of broadband pricing in the state, correlated with the level of competition. The study was conducted from August through October of 2025.

The study looked at four large markets in the state: San Mateo, Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego. By choosing these markets, the study encompasses the four largest ISPs in the state – AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Cox. The study gathered information on available broadband plans by location, advertised speed tiers, and promotional prices. The study also overlaid household incomes from the Census across the data it gathered to explore if household income played a role in prices offered by the big ISPs. The markets are interesting because they not only vary by ISP, but each market has some neighborhoods where the only gigabit provider is the cable company, and other neighborhoods where there is also one or more fiber competitor.

The overall conclusion of the study won’t surprise anybody who follows the big ISPs – broadband prices vary by the level of competition. In aggregate, the study showed that the price for broadband in competitive neighborhoods across the four markets was around $51 per month, while prices in non-competitive markets were $15 to $40 higher per month for comparable services.

The study resulted in three major conclusions:

Gigabit Fiber Drives Lower Broadband Prices. The study demonstrated that price competition only kicked in for neighborhoods where there are multiple ISPs offering gigabit broadband. That means a cable company and at least one fiber provider. The study showed that when there is competition for gigabit broadband, the competition extends downward to slower speeds offered by the big ISPs.

The study demonstrates something that is probably obvious, in that pricing is trimmed even further when there are more than two gigabit providers in a neighborhood.

Sub-Gigabit Providers Do Not Reliably Constrain Price. This is an interesting finding. It says that when the only competition to a cable company is an FWA cellular provider or a fixed wireless ISP, the cable company does not engage in significant price competition to keep customers. The study showed that, in fact, some of the neighborhoods with this kind of competition see the highest prices from the big ISPs.

This doesn’t mean that cable companies never compete hard against 100 Mbps providers, but this finding makes a lot of sense. Customers are attracted to the low prices of the FWA providers, and both T-Mobile and Verizon have price options as low as $35 per month. Cable companies, at least in these four large markets, are not willing to drop prices to compete with those prices.

Income is Not a Primary Driver of Prices. This is a bit of a surprise, because there were previous studies that suggested that pricing was lower in neighborhoods with the highest household incomes. That may have been true five years ago, but the data now suggests that prices offered by the big ISPs are mostly related to the level of competition.

The study made some other interesting observations. One observation is that in competitive neighborhoods, promotional prices can vary by household, and somebody might be paying a significantly higher or lower price than their immediate neighbors.

The study is worth reading for anybody interested in how big ISPs compete. The study has a lot of detail about how big ISPs stratify addresses and pricing offers based on the presence of other gigabit providers, while not caring much about ISPs that compete with slower products.

Who Uses the Internet?

Pew Research Center released the results of a major survey that asked how Americans use the Internet, about smartphone ownership, and about the digital divide. There were over 5,000 completed surveys conducted in the first half of 2025.

Home Broadband

About 78% of respondents live in a home that has a broadband subscription. That’s an interesting statistic since there have been past FCC reports that say that as many as 88% of homes have broadband. I wrote a blog once about the difficulty of counting homes in the US. It’s not obvious how to account for second homes and abandoned homes, as we’ve seen in the FCC fabric. But Pew’s results are based on the number of people and not homes. Some of the differences between Pew and FCC data would include large groups of people like the unhoused and members of the military who don’t live in a home.

The Pew survey shows that there is still a big difference in broadband penetration related to household incomes. 94% of those in households with an annual household income over $100,000 have a broadband subscription, while only 54% of those with household incomes under $30,000 have broadband. This highlights the essence of the still prevalent digital divide. There was a lot of hope that the federal ACP plan that provided a $30 monthly subsidy would help millions of households afford broadband, but the ACP experiment ended not long after it started.

There is also a difference depending on where people live. The broadband subscription rate is 84% in suburbs, 75% in urban areas, and 71% in rural areas.

There is also a difference by age. 87% of those between 30 and 49 have broadband, while only 70% of those over 65 have a subscription. Surprisingly, only 71% of those between 18 and 29 have broadband, which is down from 78% from a survey released in 2023, but about the same as a survey from 2021. It’s hard to know if this represents a trend such as a migration to cellphones, or if this is a group that changes a lot based on factors like jobs and the economy.

For those that love statistics, Pew has a separate report that trends these results over time.

Smartphone Usage

According to the Pew Survey, 16% of adults are “smartphone dependent”. Meaning they rely on a smartphone for broadband access and don’t subscribe to home broadband. When added to those with a home broadband subscription, 94% of adults subscribe to some form of broadband.

Smartphone usage also varies by income, in relationships that are the opposite of home broadband subscriptions. 27% of those living in homes with incomes under $30,000 reach the Internet only through a smartphone, while only 4% of those with household incomes over $100,000 rely completely on a smartphone.

The same relationship to home broadband applies when looking at age. 27% of those between 18 and 29 only reach the Internet through a smartphone, while only 11% of those between 30 and 39 do so.

Pew notes that the percentage of those who rely on a smartphone only to reach the Internet has doubled from 8% in 2013.

Starlink Flexing Its Market Power

In a short period of time, Starlink has taken three actions that demonstrates the company’s growing market power. The companies market power will be strengthened with the impending merger between SpaceX and Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI. Analysts have estimated the combined companies could garner a market value over $1 trillion.

The first move from Starlink came on January 15 when the company updated its user Privacy Policy. The revised terms say that, unless a customer opts out, Starlink can use user data “to train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models”, and that user data could be shared with third-party collaborators without providing more details to customers.

This should be disturbing to customers, because this doesn’t just mean sharing details of emails. In today’s broadband world, it could mean sharing video images, voice prints, and the giant amount of private information that an ISP can learn about its customers if it is looking.

Starlink’s second big move came when it sent a document to State Broadband Offices where Starlink is a tentative winner of BEAD grants. Starlink asked that LEO providers be excused from many of the BEAD obligations that will apply to other grant winners. The Starlink communication included a veiled threat that the company could pull out of BEAD if SBOs don’t meet its suggested terms.

Among the suggested changes, Starlink payments would not be linked to adding subscribers, and it would get 50% of BEAD funding up front and the rest over a specified schedule. Starlink would not have to provide financial reporting or provide any documentation about how it spends the grant funding. Starlink wants to be excused from speed test requirements since it can’t guarantee that subscribers have installed the satellite receiver properly. Starlink also wants to be excused from insurance and labor requirements.

On January 30, SpaceX asked the FCC for the ability to launch 1 million new satellites to create a giant orbital data center for AI. These satellites would be placed between 310 and 1,240 miles above Earth, in narrow 30-mile bands that would leave room to deconflict with other companies with similar goals. SpaceX says the giant satellite constellation is needed as the first step for humanity to become a Kardashev II-level civilization that fully harnesses the Sun’s power, while also providing enough AI capacity to serve billions of people. FYI, a Kardashev II-level civilization is one that fully harnesses the total energy output from its parent star. SpaceX says putting data centers in space is the most efficient way to meet the growing energy demands of AI data centers.

The constellation would use laser communications between satellites and would communicate back to Earth using Starlink’s current broadband constellation.  SpaceX says it could launch the data center satellites at a rapid pace using its new Starship launch vehicle.

Announcing these three things within a month shows a company that is feeling emboldened enough by market power to act as it wishes. If a terrestrial ISP openly said it will use customer data to train AI, it would risk being shunned in the market, but Starlink operates in many places where there are no other competitive options. I wonder how safe Starlink customers will feel about their data even if they opt out of sharing it with Starlink.

It’s going to be interesting to see how State Broadband Offices react to the Starlink demand for easier BEAD terms. Many of the SBOs didn’t want to make big awards to LEO satellite providers, and were coerced by  NTIA to do so with the Benefit of the Bargain rules. It’s not unimaginable that some States will outright reject Starlink’s request, which could lead to some interesting fights between States and NTIA.

The request to launch 1 million satellites could be a stunt to boost interest in the upcoming IPO and merger. Or it could be real. This FCC clearly favors satellite technology, but even for them, a request to launch 1 million satellites has to be an extreme request.

Broadband Shorts January 2026

This blog covers topics that I found interesting but which don’t warrant an entire blog.

Indoor CBRS. Federated Wireless announced a new product and a system that allows cellular carriers to use CBRS spectrum inside large buildings like hotels, malls, office buildings, and sports venues. The system places CBRS antennas throughout a building to provide the needed coverage. The concept behind the deployment is to let the carriers use free CBRS spectrum inside buildings to preserve licensed spectrum for outdoors. Currently, big crowds, like at a sporting event, can use licensed spectrum that reduces the coverage in the immediately surrounding areas. All except really old cellphones are capable of using CBRS spectrum.

Map of Data Centers by State. I found this map that shows the number of existing data centers in each state to be interesting.

Customer Interest in Satellite Cellular. A report published by GSMA Intelligence showed that 56% of the U.S. respondents to a survey said they would pay extra each month to be able to connect to satellite cellular. One of the interesting statistics from the survey is that 23% of cellular customers reported that they were unable to use basic texting at least 5 times per month. That’s not surprising to anybody who has studied rural cellular coverage, and who understands that the typical city has numerous dead zones for a given carrier.

While this finding is clearly encouraging for the companies busy deploying satellites for cell service, the 60% finding is likely overstated for now and will probably decrease once the public understands the limits of satellite cellular. It doesn’t work well indoors and is a challenge from a moving vehicle. It seems likely that satellite cellular will be far less robust in terms of data capabilities. I suspect over time that the fledgling industry will tackle these shortcomings, and this could eventually become popular product for anybody who  lives or routinely works in areas with poor cell coverage.

Starlink Approved for More Satellites. The FCC recently authorized Starlink to operate an additional 7,500 next-generation satellites. This order doubles Starlink’s authorized next-generation satellites to 15,000, still only half of its request for 30,000 additional satellites. The FCC deferred any decision on the remaining 14,988 Starlink requests to use orbits above 600 kilometers. This order also allows Starlink to expand the use of spectrum in the Ku- and Ka-bands for links to customers, and the V-, E-, and W-bands for connections to earth station gateways.

CommScope Cancels Fiber Factory Expansion. On the day that CommScope was renamed as Vistance Networks, the company announced it is cancelling plans to expand its fiber manufacturing facility in Catawba, North Carolina. In doing so, the company will be foregoing a $2 million economic development grant that would have covered some of the $60 million expansion cost. The expansion was going to create 250 additional jobs.

One reason for the change is a recent transaction where CommScope spun off much of its manufacturing capacity to Amphenol.  The announcement also said part of the change was due to the smaller amount of fiber being constructed with BEAD grants. While there is a lot of current discussion about a short-term supply chain issue with obtaining fiber, it’s likely that the company also looked out at fiber demand five and ten years from now.

Who Lives in Rural America?

We’ve spent a lot of time and money in recent years to get better broadband for rural America. I thought it would be of interest to look at who lives in rural America. The statistics in this blog come from a recent blog published by FHFA, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and is supplemented by data from the Census’s American Community Survey (ACS).

Rural Population. There are 81.7 million people living in rural areas, or 24.4% of the total population. The percentage of rural residents varies widely by state, with Massachusetts being the most urbanized state with 4.1% of people living in rural areas, and Vermont the most rural state with 80.9% of residents living in rural areas.

Ages of Residents. There is a higher percentage of senior residents over 65 in rural areas, at 19.2%, compared with urban areas of 15.7%. A lot of the reason for this is the lower percentage of residents between the ages of 18 and 64 in rural areas, at 44.6%, compared to 49.7% in urban areas. This highlights one of the biggest issues for rural America – working-age people leave rural areas to find employment. Both rural and urban areas have 22% of the population under 18 years of age, but 5% of rural people leave to join the workforce.

The age issue is a real concern for rural counties. According to Census estimates, almost half of U.S. counties have lost population since 2021. The fear is that an aging rural population will mean an acceleration of the population loss issue.

Incomes. Median household incomes are lower in rural America. 39.5% of rural households have a household income under $50,000, compared to 32.5% of urban households. Rural areas also have what FHFA calls income compression, meaning that there is not as much difference between the poorest and wealthiest in rural areas. For example, around 13.5% of rural households have annual incomes over $150,000, while that percentage in urban areas is over 22%.

Housing. As you might expect, the rest of the FHFA report focuses on housing statistics. One of the most interesting statistics looks at the percentage of homes purchased as second homes or for investment purposes. In rural areas, those categories represented 18% of homes in 2018 and 21% of homes in 2019. That dropped to 11% of home purchases in 2023. In urban areas, these categories totaled to 11% in 2018, down to 9% in 2023. I can only guess, but factors that would contribute to this change in rural areas might be related to the overall economy, but also to the fact that a lot of retiring baby boomers may have invested in second homes in the earlier time frame.

A really interesting statistic is the median household income of those who bought homes. In rural areas, that was around $87,000 in 2019 and grew to almost $90,000 in 2023. In urban areas, the median household income of home buyers was $95,000 in 2019 and grew to over 102,000 by 2023. These statistics point to two trends. First, homes in rural areas tend to cost less, meaning that borrowers can qualify for loans with a lower household income. But the high level of the median household incomes in both rural and urban areas highlights the difficulty that young households have in affording to buy a home.

Low Latency AI Networks

A partnership has been announced that has the goal of creating a low-latency private Internet for AI traffic. The three partners involved are Moonshot Energy, a manufacturer of electrical and modular infrastructure for AI data centers, QumulusAI, Inc., a provider of GPU-as-a Service, and Connected Nation Internet Exchange, which has been promoting the creation of more Internet Exchanges.

The group’s goal is to initially create 25 carrier-neutral interexchange points designed to handle only low-latency traffic. The goal is to scale to 125 locations, many which would be located at major research university campuses and municipalities. The coalition has labeled the new hubs as AI Pods.

The goal of this coalition is to create a network designed specifically for AI and other data traffic that requires low latency. The network will be designed with highly efficient switches at the hub sites that will move traffic quickly. This would essentially be a private network that would isolate low-latency traffic from the large volumes of general Internet traffic that can clog up Internet hubs at busy times.

The idea of creating private networks for data is an old one. Many universities in the country are connected to the Internet2 fiber network that allows for low-cost transfer of large amounts of research and other data between universities. Many corporations have created private networks between company sites to keep corporate data traffic out of normal Internet traffic flow and to provide a higher level of security.

Tackling this as a new venture makes a lot of sense. If the companies that run the large Internet hubs  decided to somehow give priority to AI or other traffic to reduce latency, they would awaken cries about violations of network neutrality, since such behavior is exactly what network neutrality is supposed to block. If the normal Internet hubs gave priority to bits from AI data centers, then all other traffic would get a lower priority and see more problems from delays. However, a private network for AI avoids such issues by isolating AI traffic from other traffic.

The first data site for the network is scheduled for activation in July 2026, located at the campus of Wichita State University. The coalition is working towards providing dual, geographically diverse fiber routes between the new AI hubs using 400 GB transport. Each AI site would house redundant 400 GB IX ports and switches. Data centers that want to connect to the network would acquire dark fiber to one of the AI hubs.

QumulusAI says the new network would result in moving GPU computing directly to the network edge, meaning the AI network could be expanded to reach large businesses and other users of large amounts of AI data.

Connected Nation has been touting the benefits of creating more Internet hubs for a number of years. These new hubs would also become carrier-neutral locations for the interexchange of normal Internet traffic, which would lower the cost to ISPs to reach the Internet.

The Value of Broadband to a Community

Bento J Lobo, PH.D, of the University of Chattanooga, authored a report, From Gig City to Quantum City: The Value of Fiber Optic Infrastructure in Hamilton County, TN 2011-2035, that quantifies the benefit of the citywide municipal fiber network to the City.

The fiber network is operated by EPB, the electric and fiber utility owned by the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The utility serves just under 200,000 homes and businesses. EPB began offering communications services to the business community in 2000. The utility began offering gigabit broadband to residents in 2010 and offered 10 gigabit service in 2015. EPB implemented smart-grid technology to support the electric grid in 2013. Broadband speed offerings were increased to 25 gigabits in 2022. In the same year, the company started to offer fiber connections that support quantum computing.

The study concludes that the fiber network has brought $5.3 billion in value to Hamilton County and Chattanooga between 2011 and 2025. Lobo also says that the fiber network has created over 10,000 jobs during that time.

The study includes a lot of interesting statistics to support those conclusions.

  • The fiber network enabled 17.9% of employees in the City to work from home during the pandemic, compared to 9.7% for the U.S. as a whole.
  • From 2010 to 2025, there were 255 major projects that invested $6.3 billion in new or existing businesses. This was a major improvement over the decade preceding the fiber network.
  • The City has attracted numerous tech startups, particularly in the early years when the network was unique in offering gigabit speeds.
  • In June 2024, EPB achieved a penetration rate of 70% residential and a 41% business.
  • In 2025, 30% of customers are purchasing gigabit broadband.
  • Some of the community benefits come from affordable pricing. 300 Mbps service is $57.99, and gigabit is $67.99 – prices that have remained the same since 2019.

The following table is a summary of the claimed community benefits:Some explanation of the savings categories:

  • High-speed Broadband Contribution. This recognizes the financial benefit to the utility from profits generated by fiber and by savings in costs allocated to electric service. This includes an economic multiplier that assumes that for every dollar of EPB fiber revenue, an additional 67 cents of economic value us generated in the local economy.
  • Smart Grid Savings. Smart grid savings come from increased grid efficiency, peak demand reduction, reduced outages, faster restoration after storm events, reduced pollution, and reduced power theft.
  • Residential Bill Savings. These are the savings realized by the public due to broadband rates seen in similar communities that don’t have a municipal ISP.
  • Consumer Surplus. Consumer surplus refers to the difference between what a consumer is willing to pay and what they actually pay. The study uses this as a proxy to measure non-monetary benefits of broadband, such as shopping, entertainment, work and job searches, news, health care, personal finances, social networking, travel, education, and interactions with governments.

Media Coverage of Fiber Infrastructure. The City of Chattanooga has gotten tremendous nationwide publicity due to the fiber network. The high-quality exposure has drawn innovators and entrepreneurs to the city.