EPB Goes 25G PON
EPB Goes 25G PON
October 20, 2022
Chattanooga, Tennessee, municipal electric utility EBP built the nation’s first community-wide gigabit network in 2010, providing residents and businesses with symmetrical high-speed service over a 100% fiber network. Now EPB is kicking things up another notch with a $70 million network upgrade that will support 25G PON to the entire community.
“We feel it’s extremely important to keep Chattanooga on the leading edge of technology,” said EPB Vice President of New Products Katie Espeseth. “It’s about providing more opportunities for the folks who live in Chattanooga. We feel like [25G PON] propels Chattanooga forward in a lot of different ways.”
EPB’s initial network build used Nokia hardware, which has proven to be easily capable of being upgraded from GPON to XGS-PON and now to 25G PON speeds, with future speed upgrades expected down the road as technology matures. The first customer for the 25G PON service is the Chattanooga Convention Center, which will combine the increased speed with Arista Wi-Fi 6 equipment to support thousands of simultaneous visitors at the facility.
Investing in faster speeds makes economic sense for both EPB and the community it serves, with both $2.7 billion in economic benefits over 10 years and the creation of 9500 new jobs in the community credited to EPB’s all-fiber network. “Over 40% of those we don’t feel would have come to Chattanooga without high-tech industries locating here and growing,” Espeseth said.
Is Chattanooga being too aggressive in its upgrade? EPB doesn’t think so.
“Our job is to build infrastructure and that’s exactly what this network did for our community,” Espeseth said. “While 25 Gig may not be a household word today or people may not be thinking I can use that in my home, that’s exactly what we heard when we deployed a Gig. I don’t think anyone would argue now that people have found creative ways to be productive with fiber services. We have customers who found ways to be productive with 10 Gig services and will expect that they’ll find ways to use 25 Gig services. It’s a natural fit for data centers, regional hospitals, and all the telemedicine opportunities that come with the medical practices associated with that hospital, along with others in the community. It’s not a giant leap to think we’re going to find ways to use this type of bandwidth. And certainly, we don’t want to be the gating factor.”
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