One way a community hoping to grow and attract high-tech businesses, the kind that will likely be driving the economy over the next few decades, is to take its Internet service into its own hands and provide it as a utility to the community. By investing in a high speed infrastructure, municipalities can provide significantly faster Internet service at often significantly reduced rates than the Internet Service Providers in the area.
Investment in a public Internet infrastructure benefits both the residents of the community and provides a strong lure to businesses. Cities where municipal Internet is already provided or proposed (Lafayette, Cleveland, Chattanooga, etc.) are generating lots of buzz and have been able to provider their residents with speeds in excess of 1Gbps (about 10x faster than the fastest available Cox speeds) at significantly lower prices (prices and speeds more akin to what the rest of the world pays for service that is significantly better than ours.
Personally, I'd like to see the Internet service providers in the US provide speeds more than the average 34Mbps we currently enjoy, something more on par with tech savvy countries like Romania (65Mbps average). And that US average isn't adjusted for all of the areas of the country that don't have high speed access at all; it's just the aggregate.
Using Chattanooga as an example, they are currently offering home Internet service of 1Gbps for &70/month.
Investment in a public Internet infrastructure benefits both the residents of the community and provides a strong lure to businesses. Cities where municipal Internet is already provided or proposed (Lafayette, Cleveland, Chattanooga, etc.) are generating lots of buzz and have been able to provider their residents with speeds in excess of 1Gbps (about 10x faster than the fastest available Cox speeds) at significantly lower prices (prices and speeds more akin to what the rest of the world pays for service that is significantly better than ours.
Personally, I'd like to see the Internet service providers in the US provide speeds more than the average 34Mbps we currently enjoy, something more on par with tech savvy countries like Romania (65Mbps average). And that US average isn't adjusted for all of the areas of the country that don't have high speed access at all; it's just the aggregate.
Using Chattanooga as an example, they are currently offering home Internet service of 1Gbps for &70/month.
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