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Also the funding they got ($111.5 million) was from the DOE under the auspices of building out a "Smart Grid" [1]. Doubtful that a full fiber connection to the home is required for these applications.

[1] https://www.epb.net/news/news-archive/epb-chattanooga-awarde...

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EPB does have a very nice "smart grid" that uses fiber optic lines to connect to stations positioned all over their network that monitor the condition of the connected grid and can rapidly shut off power to a very localized area. They realized that they still had quite a large bit of bandwidth remaining, and decided to start an ISP.[1]

1- This is all based on what I recall from conversations with EPB higher-ups when I spent a day chatting with them for a school event.

Yeah. I think the folks above have it backwards. Remember that EPB stands for Electric Power Board (90% sure of this). They then knew that the logical thing to follow from providing these services was to provide the "new electricity" aka Internet connectivity.

also, if you're really interested, New America Foundation recently published a good study on public broadband options http://www.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policyd...

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