Chattanooga is an interesting choice because Comcast sued the city's Electric Power Board in 2008.
After trying to prevent the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee from rolling out fiber-optic Internet service, Comcast will bring its own gigabit Internet service to the region.
"Gigabit Pro will be the fastest Internet available to residential customers in Chattanooga," Comcast SVP Doug Guthrie said in a statement. "This important milestone follows years' worth of investments we've made to consistently deliver the fastest in-home and Wi-Fi speeds to the most homes and businesses in our markets."
Comcast has already committed to rolling out Gigabit Pro, which promises speeds up to 2 Gbps, to portions of California, as well as Atlanta, and the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm areas in Florida.
But as Ars Technica noted, the choice to expand into Chattanooga is interesting because in 2008, Comcast sued the city's Electric Power Board (EPB) to stop it from building a city-owned fiber network. Comcast lost that fight, and the EPB launched its service in 2009.
But EPB could not expand into neighboring areas, because state law said it could only provide service in its electric service territory. It petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for permission to expand outside its network, and that permission was granted in February.
The state of Tennessee sued the FCC over the move, arguing that "the FCC has unlawfully inserted itself between the state of Tennessee and the state's own political subdivisions." But competition does interesting things, so Comcast's super-fast Gigabit Pro will be available to up to 200,000 Chattanooga residents beginning in June.
The announcement comes after Comcast abandoned its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable after regulators signaled they would not approve the deal.
Post a Comment