Many years ago the Chamber of Commerce organized a visit to Chattanooga to see if there was anything Gainesville might learn from the Choo-choo city.

We learned that Chattanooga used to have a really bad smog problem, but fixed it. We learned that the city wanted electric buses — and built them locally because electric buses weren't really a thing yet.

Interesting, but I can't say we learned a lot that we could bring home and unpack for local consumption.

Still, maybe a return visit is in order. Because Chattanooga has been in the news a lot lately.

"Chattanooga ... may not be the first place that springs to mind when it comes to cutting-edge technology," CNN Money reported recently. "But thanks to its ultra-high-speed Internet, the city has established itself as a center for innovation ... and an encouraging example for those frustrated with slow speeds and high costs from private broadband providers."

And then there's this from The Tennessean, "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.

"In the past three years," the Tennessean continued, "the city’s unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1 percent from 7.8 percent ... and 10-gigabit speed internet has fueled wage growth ..."

Chattanooga got tired of waiting for the private sector to connect it to the rest of the world.

All of which raises interesting questions.

In the absence of fast, reliable and affordable broadband access, should a city simply wait for the private sector to hook it up? Or should it declare that — like education, infrastructure, public safety and sanitation — insuring access for all ought to be a basic function of government?

Chattanooga went with broadband access as a basic public service.

Meanwhile, back in Gainesville.

Home of the University of Florida.

Self-styled Innovation City.

Would-be spawner of cutting edge start-ups.

We're still pretty much a sleepy way stop on the High Speed Highway.

"If you compare cost of getting broadband, we are the most expensive city in Florida with a population above 100,000," says Brian Eastman, co-founder of Gainesville Connect, a group that wants to prod the city and county into confronting the community's broadband deficit.

"We pay about $450 more per year than people in Tampa, and we don't have great connection. Even a mile outside city limits, you can't get high speed internet."

Why? One explanation is that Gainesville is captive to a broadband monopoly.

"There is only one company in Gainesville that serves the whole city, and that's Cox," Eastman continued. "As the internet becomes more a part of our daily lives, more data gets used. We're going to need to keep up if we want to be a 21st century city competing with the rest of the world."

GRU has laid about 650 miles of fiber optic cable in and around the city. So should city-owned GRUCom be the broadband monopoly buster?

Not necessarily, says Gainesville City Commissioner Adrian Hayes-Santos.

"We need a study to look at possible solutions to the access problems we have in our community," he says. "Were paying high prices. Accessibility is limited for low income citizens. We need the city and county to define the problem and come up with solutions."

In fact there are lots of examples of cities that have been able to foster competition without getting into the business themselves. Nashville, for instance, makes its public wired infrastructure available to private providers to save them the considerable cost of digging and installing their own.

Champaign-Urbana teamed with the University of Illinois to extend broadband service into low income neighborhoods in a process that began with the formation of a Broadband Access Committee.

Which is really all that Connected Gainesville is asking for right now.

"This is the beginning of a conversation that we need to have with Cox, GRU, UF, the city of Gainesville and others," Eastman says. "We're going to have to talk with one another to find where we go from here."

Time to play broadband catch-up, Gainesville.

— Ron Cunningham is former editorial page editor of The Sun.