AT&T’s deployment of U-Verse services in Tennessee, which commenced this week, could provide an unusual showcase of three-way competition in the country’s most active hotbed for municipal fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), says Telephony Magazine.
This week AT&T pledged to spend $400 million rolling out U-Verse services to 56 Tennessee towns over the next two years. The announcement came with the enactment of a state law passed earlier this year granting statewide franchises for video services.
Tennessee has more municipal fiber projects than any other state, according to Michael Render, president of research firm RVA. AT&T claims to have more than 1 million customers in the state with Comcast the dominant cable provider.
Tennessee already has five active municipal broadband projects and more on the way. And at last count, municipalities there already had 33,000 video customers among them. Only Washington state has as many public fiber projects, but many of its deployments are from public utility districts as opposed to municipalities.
Tennessee’s largest muni fiber project is in Jackson, where the local utility company has been turning up FTTH customers since 2004, passing the 10,000 customer mark three years ago.
The Jackson Energy Authority of Jackson, Tennessee, selected Wave7 Optics’ Last Mile Link. After the first year of operation, nearly 8,362 homes and businesses were using “Eplus Broadband” service.
The municipal electric utility in Clarksville, CDE Lightband, has been rolling out fiber this year with the goal of offering voice, video and 10-Mb/s symmetrical broadband service to about 50,000 residences. So far, despite delays, hundreds of customers have been turned up, the company says.
Meanwhile, EPB, the electric utility in Chattanooga, recently secured a $26-million loan to fund triple-play services over its existing FTTP network. Like CDE Lightband, EPB helps justify the cost of fiber deployment by using the network initially for remote meter-reading. EPB expects to complete the network upgrade for telecom services this summer, launching service early next year. Its goal is to reach 80% of its utility customers in three years and all 167,000 of them in five years. And its plan assumes a 35% to 45% take rate.
Consumers in some markets are already anticipating a competitive three-way market for residential telecom services with EPB, AT&T and Comcast.
Competing against Comcast should be a snap. Comcast and Time/Warner treat their customers like morons.
The Stevenson, Washington Wi-Fi Project connects to fiber pulled to their gateway in the center of town and operate a second gateway located in their Port building along the waterfront.
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the CDE lightband fiber to the home ad shows a cable with copper wires. networking fail?
Left by Don Park on July 7th, 2008