

In Tennessee, four bills seek to reverse restrictions on public broadband - RougeFemme
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/in-tennessee-four-bills-seek-to-reverse-restrictions-on-public-broadband/

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joeyh
I've had two good broadband ISPs in my life. The first was the bay area's Raw
Bandwidth. The second was a small municipal electic utility providing fiber to
the home in my hometown in TN. Who I switched to when Charter was making
noises about intercepting all HTTP traffic to puts ads in it..

My current location in rural TN has no broadband access at all, only
satellite. I doubt any traditional ISP is going to find it worth their while
to provide service in most of my county, which is one of the poorest in the
state. They'd rather spend their money lobbying to retain their lucrative
monopolies than on infrastructure.

~~~
malandrew
What's the state of satellite access today in terms of cost, quality, speed
and service?

Is it completely acceptable or a frustrating experience? I ask because of all
the open source developers out there, I'm kind of envious of the way you go
about it. More and more, I'd love the opportunity to go spend a few weeks to a
few months in some cabin in the woods just building stuff.

(edit: for those that don't know, the above poster is Joey Hess who makes git-
annex, etckeeper, tig, mr, etc. If you haven't already read it, check out:
[http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/](http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/)
)

~~~
joeyh
Slight delay..

The last time I used satellite was ten years ago and, I was on a Huges
satellite which had a FAP that meant the max transfer per week was as small as
dialup. (Possibly excluding some http pages that get cached in the satellite
itself..) Plus ten times the latency.

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jofer
On a related note: Chattanooga's local electric cooperative is deploying fiber
throughout the city. They currently offer gigabit speeds for ~$70/mo. Have a
look at: [http://chattanoogagig.com/](http://chattanoogagig.com/)

It's (EPB) community owned, as I understand it. I assume these bills are at
least vaguely related to this, but I'm not quite sure how...

~~~
theandrewbailey
I recall that they used to offer slower speeds for more, but they decided to
be like Google when Google moved into Kansas City.

[http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/125831](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/125831)

~~~
btrautsc
This is true. I actually had the opportunity to sit in many meetings with EPB
"officials" as the pricing aspects were discussed.

It was fascinating - but ultimately they threw a dart on a high price, IMO,
basically out of fear of the unknown. Once Google Fiber announced prices, EPB
had a lot of data and got a lot of pressure from the local startup community/
general population to bring prices in line. Luckily, they listened.

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tejay
As a Tennessean, I'm pretty proud of this.

If you want a really cheap city to work in that still has a fairly
sophisticated technology community, consider Nashville!

~~~
btrautsc
Cheers to that!

Shameless plug: Tennessee is a great place for startups. Ambition (YC w14) is
based in Chattanooga, TN - a beautiful city, nestled in the mountains, with
great quality of life, low cost of living, plus an awesome, smaller but
energetic downtown + hip surrounding neighborhoods (think Boulder, CO or a
very mini-Austin, TX).

We are also ~ 90 minutes from downtown Nashville and downtown Atlanta.

If anyone is ever passing through or interested in a change of scenery from
the Southeast (or the Bay Area, DC, NYC... cough, _anywhere_ ), let us know.
We're hiring.

~~~
deftnerd
I just got a 250k BitAngels grant for a project I'm working on. I'm in Austin,
but I've also been considering a move to a less expensive place as long as it
had good broadband and an active developer community. Chattanooga is
definitely on the short list.

~~~
btrautsc
Just noticed your comment, albeit a few days late. If you have questions about
getting started or making connections in Chatt - shoot me an email and we'll
try to set some intro's up. Per your ideals, this could be a pretty good place
to work on your project. Cost of living will definitely be less than Austin.
(although our brisket is not quite as good).

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Dirlewanger
From the Tennessee Telecommunications Associations chief (a laughably
bureaucratic-sounding job if I've ever heard one):

"These bills would allow municipalities to expand beyond their current
footprint and offer broadband in our service areas. If this were to happen,
municipalities could cherry-pick our more populated areas, leaving the more
remote, rural consumers to bear the high cost of delivering broadband to these
less populated regions"

What slimy shit-talk. Hopefully the rest of the TN state legislators aren't as
dumb as state legislators typically are and go forward with such measures.

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kungfooey
This is good news. As I understand, there is city-owned fiber in Nashville
(from NES?) that is currently unused. Not sure if that's related to the
current legality of municipal broadband or not.

If you're in the Nashville (mid-state) area be sure to check out the variety
of channels on Freenode (#nashjs, #pynash #nashfp #nashvillephp nashvillevim
and many others). Would love to have you join us.

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gavinbaker
I'm up in Knoxville (about 1.5 hours north of Chattanooga) and while our
startup scene isn't as web focused or developed (the Co.lab is awesome). We do
have some fairly major businesses, Scripps Networks, Regal Cinemas, Pilot
Flying J, Bush's Baked Beans, PetSafe, Alcoa, SeaRay boats, MasterCraft boats
and Ruby Tuesday top the list and really smart people at The University of
Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Lab - one of six national labs. If you ever
want to visit, I'd be glad to play tour guide of my adopted city.

~~~
re_todd
Any hiking and/or mountains nearby?

~~~
ewams
Yes. A large portion of the state is state ran parks.

[http://www.state.tn.us/environment/natural-areas/natural-
are...](http://www.state.tn.us/environment/natural-areas/natural-
areas/virgin/)

[http://tnstateparks.com/parks/about/fall-creek-
falls](http://tnstateparks.com/parks/about/fall-creek-falls)

[http://hikingchattanooga.com/](http://hikingchattanooga.com/)

[http://www.appalachiantrail.org/hiking/find-a-
hike/interacti...](http://www.appalachiantrail.org/hiking/find-a-
hike/interactive-map)

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Patrick_Devine
And yet, the silicon valley is a broadband wasteland. Google Fiber can't come
soon enough.

