The network has been developed by local electric company, the Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) using Alcatel’s gigabit passive optical gear. Chattanooga, Tenn. became the first city in the U.S. with gigabit speeds about 18 months ago and alos relied on its local electric utility to build the fiber network. It did so despite aggressive opposition from incumbent broadband providers.

A growing number of smaller towns are moving towards the gigabit broadband. Google Fiber recently went live in Kansas City. Several Ohio college towns are working with Gig.U project and Gigabit Squared on ultrafast broadband networks. The Gig.U group  is working on rolling out networks in the state Maine and the city of Atlanta. Chicago has gotten into gigabit action as well.

The cities are taking matter into their own hands mostly because the current broadband market is essentially a comfortable duopoly of cable and telecom operators with little competitive pressure and as a result no incentive to boost the bandwidth and cut prices.

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Act now, plan later.

The broadband stimulus program of 2009, and to some degree Google’s Gigabit City contest last year, forced communities to quickly run a gauntlet designed to compare applicants and award grants. But the winners are realizing that conforming to an application process at breakneck speed is vastly different from the planning required to define and key reach broadband objectives.

Some participants by necessity had to forgo effective needs assessment and planning based on that assessment and are left wondering if the network they build will deliver what they need or want. Most believe, as the theme for the recent GigaOm’s RoadMap conference states, “Connectivity Changes Everything,” but it is the particulars of that change that give mayors and stakeholders heartburn.

Brainstorming for ideas is a logical first step, but it shouldn’t get too far ahead of effective planning. In Chattanooga this weekend, several hundred people will use the city’s gigabit network for a 48-hour united effort to help 27 entrepreneurs transform ideas to investment-worthy businesses. A great idea by itself, 48Hour Launch is part of a bigger, more complex and well-planned economic development program involving a variety of citizens, businesses and organizations.

Getting ideas and then getting them done.

For brainstorming to be effective, educational institutions, the medical community, small businesses and startups, government workers, and others first should understand what they need from a gigabit network and what such a network can deliver. Once the people who will use the network see what’s possible, then start the idea generation engines. Building the Gigabit City, written by The Brainzooming Group and the Social Media Club of Kansas City and released Thursday, reports on a recent day-long brainstorming session reflecting this tactic that involved over 65 local stakeholders.

One of the ideas in the report is to create “virtual doctors” using video and audio technology that enables doctors to reduce travel, increase time with patients and dispense general medical advice to a broader audience through interactive podcasts and video presentations. Another explores creating high-speed, high-bandwidth tools that enable inner-city schools to share resources with affluent schools. Similar applications could enable alumni, business executives and skilled workers to mentor high school and college students “face-to-face” from anywhere in the country or world.

Stakeholders should next go into planning sessions where ideas are prioritized, roadmaps laid out for each stakeholder group and people begin putting concrete plans for applications into place with benchmarks for measuring success. Other communities’ success stories should be incorporated where it makes sense. Software developers, UI designers and other tech experts should be brought in at this point to create technology roadmaps that complement the community’s plans.

Make the network the star.

As much as possible, use the network to integrate apps and activities. 48Hour Launch, for example, is one of a series of events interwoven under the banner Gig City to create startups. Another activity recruits college students from around the U.S. for a summer gig application development contest with a $50,000 prize. A second contest for entrepreneurs using Chattanooga’s gig network to develop apps offers a $100,000 grand prize. A complementary set of activities offers nearly $200,000 in seed capital to startups with prototypes of gigabit apps that seem likely to attract serious venture capital. All of these ideas are aimed at boosting economic development through getting startups to come to Chattanooga because of its gigabit network.

“We’re looking to bring together technology, people and resources that will define the next generation of broadband applications,” Gig City director John Wilson said on a recent Gigabit Nation show.

It’s still early in the game yet for Kansas City and many other communities moving toward better, faster broadband. Some may stumble along the way. However, understanding the community’s needs and planning appropriately – rather than just hoping if you build it, the applications will come – is what takes a city to exciting broadband destinations.

Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst and consultant who helps organizations develop effective broadband strategies. Follow him on Twitter (@cjsettles) or via his blog.

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“We have three main goals for Chattanooga’s broadband network,” says EPB President Harold DePriest, who oversaw the public utility’s $300 million investment in the network. “Use it to modernize our electric power infrastructure. Generate enough revenue for the network to pay for itself and be a catalyst for economic development.”

After spending two days in Chattanooga meeting with various stakeholders, it’s easy to see the network exceeding those goals.

EPB’s new smart grid, enabled by a gigabit of digital horsepower, can reduce hour-long power interruptions down to a few seconds. When eight twisters hit Chattanooga within 24 hours, the smart grid saved an estimated 730,000 outage minutes, as well as 250 unnecessary truck rolls. Financially, the network launched in September 2009 and had its first profitable month 18 months later. With all investment variables aside, it should start generating enough revenue to sustain operations by 2012. What’s more, EPB will capture millions of dollars is cost savings thanks to significant operational improvements.

LampPost founders want to use the gigabit network to encourage entrepreneurs in Chattanooga.

And it seems everywhere one looks, incubators, associations and regular businesses are all pulling together to make Chattanooga the place to be for forward-looking companies.

When you analyze the more than 130 communities running successful broadband networks, a common thread uniting them is strong leadership from top elected officials. Prior to Chattanooga’s network launch, incumbents in the area ran 2,600 ads attacking the project and asking citizens to write City Hall to protest the project. Thirty-eight people did. In response to the ads, one citizen wrote a letter to the editor asking neighbors to call City Hall if they felt EPB should build the network. Nearly 600 calls were logged supporting the project. Chattanooga’s mayor deserves much of the credit for rallying citizens behind the network project.

A Focus on Applications, Not Just Fiber

“This network is as important as anything we’ve done,” says Mayor Ron Littlefield. “The community itself is catching on to the value of the network in bits and pieces.” And how do you rally constituents to support an initiative involving technology many don’t understand? “We started by showing people how to solve common problems. That engages them. Then we show them how to tackle specialized problems. This makes them loyal supporters.”

Community stakeholders brainstorm for new gigabit application ideas.

EPB expands and strengthens community support with frequent briefing and brainstorming meetings with various stakeholders. Constituents keep up to date on developments and contribute a steady stream of ideas for network applications. These tactics cement customer loyalty even under an onslaught of competitive assaults. It’s impressive listening ideas build on each other as people hear about a particular feature or new application. The level of buy-in and word-of-mouth translate into significant revenue.

So what else has Chattanooga done? First, the city’s fiber overcomes one of muni Wi-Fi’s biggest original flaws: The mesh access points didn’t have enough horsepower for robust mobile applications and high data traffic. Chattanooga’s mesh design links a fiber strand to every third access point. The city could afford this because they built a set of mobile and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications that qualified them for six different grants. Rather than focus on “building a network,” the city focused on creating applications, won big pots of money that was pooled together and then built a superior wireless network that delivers 16 Mbps both upstream and downstream.

The city bought wireless radios that can be programmed to deliver WiMAX, should the city be so inclined, and it can incorporate existing local towers into the network to deliver LTE service in rural areas. Though this network is just for local governments in EPB’s 600-square-mile service area to share, other communities in the U.S. can put aspects of Chattanooga’s approach into play for consumer and business subscribers.

The Revenue Is in Applications, But the Returns Are in Economic Development

Economic development, though, is where long-term returns are. A common theme in discussions with business leaders and entrepreneurs was that the economic impact of the network is challenging to forecast, but easier to assess. According to Chris Daly, director of technology development and transfer for the Enterprise Center — which drives city economic development initiatives — “The difficulty is that the timeline you need to evaluate broadband’s impact on the local economy is so long, maybe two years or more, and so you have to review data retroactively. However, we know that when we look back, we’re going to see many changes to the local economy, because we’re seeing them already.”

SimCenter Enterprises CEO explains how gigabit networks can accelerate simulation development.

This makes evaluating the need for a gigabit network the ultimate “what if” exercise. What if a city had screaming fast outdoor wireless connectivity? What if the most disadvantaged youth could access a gigabit distance learning application at Harvard? What if local businesses could get real-time mentoring on global marketing from executives in China, Germany and Brazil?

SimCenter Enterprises in Chattanooga embodies this spirit. It’s a modeling and simulation company that uses high-performance computing to create or re-create scenarios to help predict the future. High-end modeling and simulation is a bandwidth hog if you want to loop in people working at other locations into the “what if” process. However, a gigabit network enables a small company in a mid-sized city to become the center of a world of supercomputers, international research teams and corporate giants.

Spending time in Chattanooga was a trip to see up close and personal what happens when a community asks, “What if we had a gigabit? What could we create, what can we change, how do we produce a stronger economy?” Chattanooga, along with many of the other communities that own their own broadband networks, are just beginning to find answers to a whole range of “what if” questions. Others, such Tacoma, Wash. and Santa Monica, Calif. have been answering the question for years. Undoubtedly, many more will follow them.

Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst and Co-Director of Communities United for Broadband and can be found at @cjsettles on Twitter.

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Today Chattanooga’s municipal utility and communications company EPB tells us it has installed a 100-kW Bloom Box on its rooftop that will provide energy for its headquarters. An EPB spokesperson tells us it’s the first Bloom Energy fuel cell installed outside of California, where state subsidies have encouraged companies like Google and eBay to buy and install Bloom boxes on their campuses.

EPB’s Bloom Box uses natural gas (the Bloom boxes are only 100 percent renewable if they are using scarce biogas) and the energy from the Bloom box on the EPB building is routed directly into the electrical system of the building, replacing energy that would have been purchased through traditional generation.

The funding for the Bloom box, which can cost between $700,000 to $800,000, comes partly from a grant provided to Chattanooga’s National Center for Computational Engineering (SimCenter). EPB says the fuel cell project was developed by a group including Congressman Zach Wamp, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, SimCenter, EPB, the Tennessee Valley Authority, The Enterprise Center and Bloom Energy.

The Tennessee Bloom Energy project is similar to the ones being deployed by utilities in California. In April the California Public Utilities Commission approved a request from PG&E and Southern California Edison to install fuel cells from Bloom Energy and FuelCell Energy on campuses in California. PG&E plans to install a 200-kW fuel cell from Bloom Energy at San Francisco State University (SFSU).

The California utility fuel cell projects have been a touch controversial given administrative law judge Dorothy Duda initially recommended that the CPUC should reject the fuel cell projects saying it would cost: “[T]hree times the price paid to renewable generation.” But the utilities are looking at the fuel cell projects as trials and research and development for how to work with fuel cell technology, and likely EPB has the same attitude as the Calfornia utilities.

EPB is also in the process of building out a $200 million fiber network for the city’s residents that will offer Internet, phone, video and — in an unusual twist and one of the first of its kind — smart grid services. To help build that network EPB was awarded $111.57 million out of the smart grid stimulus funds.

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Images courtesy of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga EPB, and include Congressman Zach Wamp with KR Sridhar, co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, and Dr. Harry McDonald, holder of the Chair of Excellence in Computational Engineering at the National Center for Computational Engineering (SimCenter).

Smart grid technology and energy management is a sort of hybrid version of the “quadruple play,” says Jim Ingraham, vice president, Strategic Planning for EPB, referring to a twist on the traditional quadruple play of services for broadband, which normally includes Internet, video, phone and mobile. While the smart grid likely won’t be part of the fiber quadruple play for most utilities, EPB says that by building out a fiber network — with a smart grid stimulus grant — the town will create almost $850 million in value from both communications and smart grid services, including things like jobs and energy savings.

“Fiber” or fiber optic cables use pulses of light to send data, and provide a reliable blazing-fast connection starting at 1.5 Mbps and going as high as 500 Mbps. Telecom companies like Verizon have been promising, and building out, fiber-to-the-home services — running video, Internet and voice over IP — for years. Some cities like Chattanooga have decided to build out their own networks, largely to use it as a way to boost economic prosperity in their regions, delivering jobs and high-speed connections for businesses.

EPB has teamed up with Tantalus to build a fiber-connected (and wireless-enabled) smart meter, which Ingraham said had to be specially built for EPB’s fiber network because of the rarity of using fiber for smart grid. Alcatel-Lucent is the company’s main communications fiber provider. The fiber network is about a third built out, and last year the utility pledged to have all of its residents connected to the network within five years.

But does a utility really need all that bandwidth for smart grid services, which largely include bits of information about energy and electrical systems (as opposed to an application like streaming video)? Probably not that much speed is required, but more utilities are looking at high-speed wireless options like WiMAX to add on extra bandwidth for additional applications.

Chattanooga’s fiber network is already being built out and will offer a whole lot more in terms of communications services. Ingraham also says it’s significantly cheaper for the utility to build out a fiber network, compared with other options like cellular, given the city’s location amid mountains and valleys. (That’s unusual because I had always heard valleys actually do well with wireless that has a big enough range.) In addition, Ingraham says the network is one of the most secure and reliable options for smart grid services, and it won’t have to be upgraded for 50-plus years — because it’s so fast — so will be cheaper in the long run.

The utility can also apply for a stimulus fund grant if it’s running smart grid services over its fiber network. Ingraham tells us that EPB has applied for $111 million from the Department of Energy for a $226 million total project to extend the fiber network out to the rest of the community.

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