Jamie McGee

jmcgee@tennessean.com

When Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke describes his city's economic renewal, he points to the city’s fiber network as a significant source of its new vibrancy.

In the past three years, the city’s unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1 percent from 7.8 percent and the wage rate has also been climbing. Volkswagen’s presence has boosted the manufacturing sector and 10-gigabit speed internet has fueled wage growth, Berke said, speaking at Fiber to the Home Council Americas conference at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center on Tuesday.

“We know that the wage rise is linked to internet jobs and particularly the technology sector,” Berke said.

A pioneer in municipal broadband, Chattanooga developed its fiber network in 2010 with $330 million, paid for with $105 million in federal funds and the rest from bonds. The high-speed access led to direct and indirect economic gains and has been profitable.

“It changed our conceptions of who we are and what is possible,” Berke said. “Before we had never thought of ourselves as a technology city."

Gigtank, a startup accelerator, emerged, and startup and tech events popped up as the city began taking advantage of its high-speed access. Berke described a Chattanooga company that developed during an entrepreneurial event and was eventually bought by OpenTable. Now, OpenTable has an office in the city’s Innovation District and it has doubled its local presence, part of the city’s downtown revitalization efforts.

Downtown has doubled its residents and landlords often advertise gigabit speeds that are included in monthly rents.

“It’s an explosion of growth in our technology sector,” he said. “That has sparked not only this (downtown) living but restaurants and bars and music and the quality of life that truly makes a city interesting, cool, hip, vibrant and energetic."

Other Tennessee cities, including Tullahoma and Clarksville, also offer municipal fiber networks for residents. Nashville residents are gaining similar access through Comcast, AT&T and Google Fiber, although the high-speed fiber will not necessarily be available to every Nashville neighborhood.

Comprehensive access is important, Berke said, especially when it comes to bridging gaps in digital skills.

“Our fiber goes to each and every home,” Berke said. “We can’t have digital gated communities. If we do that we and only allow fiber to go to some parts of the city, some parts of the state, we will see technology widen the gulf between people as opposed to bridging it.

More recently, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga has partnered with Chattanooga schools to ensure that those students on free and reduced lunches have discounted internet access, at $27 a month. Seventeen hundred families have signed up for it in the past nine months, he said. A grandmother who once took her children to a fast-food restaurant for Wi-Fi access can now let her grandchildren complete assignments from home, he said.

"For us as a country to be at the forefront of the world's economy, and to continue to be the leader we are and have to be, it's really important for us to expand and take advantage of this critical new structure," he said.

Reach Jamie McGee at 615-310-1873 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.