Connecting Tennessee

State gets closer to solving puzzle of high-speed internet for all residents

Friday, August 2, 2024, Vol. 48, No. 31
By Joe Morris

After three decades of the internet being an integral part of everyday life, the realities of the digital divide still affect many Tennesseans.

Getting connected is easy, if you reside in a metro area. If you’re living in a smaller, rural community, not so much. A lack of easily accessible internet in the state’s less populated areas has long hampered everything from economic development to education.

And even in areas where there is reliable connectivity, there often is only one choice. That means there may not be access to the highest speeds and/or latest delivery technology. Lack of competition also can mean steeper prices.

Efforts to bridge that divide are well underway. Laws created decades ago that limited what services local utilities could offer, or where they could offer them, have been revisited.

That desire to open up competition also comes with an influx of federal cash, coupled with significant state spending, to spin fiber-optic lines out into areas that have yearned for the ability to stream videos and movies, do research for school projects and much more.

The vital need for more universal access took on very real meaning during the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote learning wasn’t possible for children with no way to access online classes and courses.

As test scores have since borne out, that further deepened educational gaps between the state’s municipalities and its more remote areas. Officials at all levels of government began to move connectivity up their to-do lists with haste, and Tennessee was no different.

“It’s all coming together,” says Taylre Beaty, state broadband director in the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development. “We are to get all Tennesseans served with high-speed internet by 2028. We’re in a really good spot in that we have a good strategy in place to make sure that we are getting the last and most rural and remote areas served.

“We’re investing in bridging the gaps in networks to make sure that anyone in Tennessee who wants to have access to broadband can have it, and also investing in affordability measures to make sure that those who want that connection can actually access the technology and devices they need to connect.”

That’s being done through a combination of funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which the state began to receive in 2021 and will finish by 2026, and the $813 million Tennessee is receiving from the Broadband Equity, Access and Development (BEAD) Program, a part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which itself is an element of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act pushed to passage by President Joe Biden in 2021.

The application window is opening later this year for providers to begin seeking those funds, which are expected to be available through 2028.

While competing interests have kept some potential providers, such as local utilities, limited in the past, the state is now “willing to work with whoever we can because it’s going to take all the players to get this done,” Beaty says.

“We’ve done a lot of relationship building with providers of all sizes, seeing how they can work with us and how we can all work together,” she continues. “We’re working with everyone from traditional cable providers to electrical cooperatives to telephone co-ops to municipal utility providers.

“It just depends on where we are. Sometimes you have all of those in an area and we see multiple applications. In others, there may be only one. The application and review process for these funds is allowing us to look at the best, and most cost-effective, solutions for that community.”

And the competition has been robust. The last round of ARPA funding resulted in 218 applications, Beaty says. The BEAD numbers should be higher because the ECD’s broadband team has fanned out to hold awareness sessions to boost visibility into the coming funds and how to get them.

The latest influx of funds to providers came earlier in 2024 when the state announced the awarding of $162.7 million in broadband and digital opportunity grants. The recipients will provide access and programs to more than 236,000 across 92 counties.

The ECD says it has now invested more than $715 million into the state’s broadband infrastructure, connecting more than 689,000 residents across 275,000 residential and business locations. That includes $97.2 million to fund the Last Mile and Middle Mile infrastructure programs.

“We are going to be looking at all 95 counties and could see as many as 300 applications or more,” Beaty says. “So far we have worked with 40 to 50 providers statewide, and more may be coming in because we may not have officially heard from everyone yet, but there’s been interest in every county.”

Jump in size, scope of projects

More, and more powerful, broadband access is good for businesses and consumers. It’s also good for the companies that install the lines in the ground and up on power poles.

LDA Engineering, a 40-year-old provider of infrastructure solutions across the Southeast with offices in Knoxville, Chattanooga, the Tri-Cities, Nashville and Memphis, is working with new and longtime clients through the LDA Fiber Division to develop turnkey solutions for installation high-speed fiber systems.

That has included, among others, the Knoxville Utilities Board Fiber Hut design project, which will create multiple fiberglass structures to house fiber equipment throughout the utility’s footprint, as well as the Charter Design Services project, a multiyear effort by Charter Communications to expand and upgrade its coaxial and fiber-optic networks.

“We’re doing work now in East Tennessee to help telecoms and other providers deliver high-speed internet to both underserved and slow-served areas,” says Carlton Davis, chief operating officer. “That’s everything from design and permitting to pole load analysis, field engineering, inspections and oversight services. There are a lot of moving parts.”

Every project is different, and so is every provider’s specific network and business goals, adds Ethan Elyasian, vice president of operations with LDA Fiber.

“A provider like Charter is a fully encompassing, Tier 1 network provider with a lot of experience,” Elyasian says. “The same is with a provider like ATT. They are embarking on very large buildouts. Someone like KUB, a traditional utility provider, is newer to the fiber broadband world, and they are moving into it because they see this service as a utility and a necessity.

“They know how to provide electricity, gas and water, but not so much how to set up terminals, fiber cable and everything else a network requires.”

That creates a situation where an entity wants to move quickly and capture market share, while also enduring some “analysis paralysis” around what to do first.

“People are clamoring for this service, and it’s pretty technical to do; a lot of expertise is needed,” Elyasian says. “There have been restrictions, for instance, that have kept some utilities from entering the market, or only being able to go where they have current services offered.

“They are now putting in a network or expanding their reach. They may also be looking at a partnership of some kind. There are a lot of variables and a lot of opportunities. Broadband is a life-changing utility.”

Chattanooga sets the bar

Any Tennessee entity looking to establish or grow a broadband network is likely to look at Chattanooga as a model. No wonder. Marketed as “Gig City,” Chattanooga was the first city in the Western Hemisphere to offer 1-gigabit-per-second fiber internet to all residences and businesses.

That began in 2010, and the city has built on that platform the years since. Now it offers 25-gigabit-per-second service and has launched “Gig City Goes Quantum,” a new initiative to prepare for education, jobs and business opportunities in the emerging quantum technology sector.

The growing network is owned and operated by the Chattanooga Electric Power Board. The community-owned electric utility also can lay claim to the nation’s first true Smart Grid, a grid that has devices deployed across the whole system to control processes like remote and automated switching as well as heightened visibility into the whole system, and hopes to continue leveraging its technological advantages as quantum information technology develops in the coming years.

“We are a local power company in the TVA universe, and began servicing customers in 1939,” says J. Ed Marston, vice president of strategic communications. “We were a very traditional, typical municipal utility until the mid-2000s when we began to look at deploying a fiber-optic network.

“We wanted to develop a state-of-the art Smart Grid, and as we looked at that it became clear that deploying a fiber-optic communications system at the same time was the right move. The expense is deploying the fiber, the backbone, and then you can perform ongoing updates and upgrades to the other parts of that network as you offer internet, telephone and television services.”

EPB’s multifaceted approach included laying fiber and selling services, so the customer base rolled out alongside the deployment. The 2010 official launch beat current players such as Google, which launched its network in selected cities, including Nashville, a few years later.

In the years since, the utility has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to be a living laboratory for data and research related to Smart Grid. The 10-gig service came in 2015, followed by 25-gig in 2022.

EPB also is the only service provider in the area to provide 100% fiber-optic service on a symmetrical network, meaning there are equal upload and download speeds available. Users of other EPB services have the option to tap into the network.

Along the way, the utility has provided plenty of advice to entities entering the broadband and/or fiber-optic market. So much so, in fact, that it created its own solutions group, which offers support around business services and technical support that can be barriers to entry.

And almost 15 years in, the adoption has been impressive. In addition to happy residential customers, EPB has also spurred economic development by offering a service that, all other things being equal, tipped the vote in Chattanooga’s favor.

“Gig service has been a real decision-maker for some companies, and some of them have called out our internet service and high speed as increasing their productivity,” Marston says. “They cite it as a real boon to their business.”

EPB backs up those comments with stats: A 2021 study showed a $2.7 billion community benefit after 10 years of operation, helping to create and retain nearly 10,000 jobs. At the same time, there was a 55% drop in outage minutes, helping to keep productivity levels up, and $110 million in research owing at least in part to the Living Laboratory designation.

That should continue into the quantum years, when partnerships with the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and others come online or continue to deepen. Having the fiber in place is a huge leg up, as new technology can be deployed into and through it much faster.

That was demonstrated through programs that were set up during the pandemic, one of which was HCS (Hamilton County Schools) EdConnect, which bridged the digital divide by connecting homes to the service, providing a router and setting up Wi-Fi all at no charge for students in need. It is now a permanent program serving more than 16,000 students, or 28,000 area residents.

The goal is to continue being a hub for service wherever and whenever possible, and also lead in adapting and enhancing what the network can do, Marston says.

Knoxville’s aggressive rollout

Knoxville businesses and consumers also are eager for the benefits of the latest internet-access technology, says Jamie Davis, senior vice president of fiber and chief technology officer for KUB.

“We have been in residential and business service for about two years, and began our build a year before that,” Davis says. “About 10 years ago we began transitioning from analog, copper communication lines to a more digital format for our substations. Building a ring for our communications to and between them. That was about 300 miles of fiber-optic cable.

“We saw what fiber was doing for our own benefit and watched the other utility applications for fiber continue to grow. We also were seeing the notion of the Smart Grid continue to evolve, and so there were more and more reasons to look into what else we could do with these tools.”

As an example, he points to smart switches, which have replaced older, more inert switches that could not provide needed data.

“They didn’t offer all we wanted in terms of control and didn’t give feedback,” he says. “Now we have the intelligence to anticipate faults and take action before an outage occurs. We can’t reduce something like trees falling on lines or cars running into poles, but we can reduce the impact elsewhere that allows customers to keep their power on. That’s essential for them, and also for businesses who need reliability for their operations.”

KUB now has five divisions: electricity, natural gas, wastewater utility, water and fiber. That last began to come online around 2019, when fiber was deployed into a ring that connected substations. Like its counterparts in Chattanooga and elsewhere, during the pandemic the utility began to explore how it could expand what it was doing to offer needed connectivity outside its own operations.

“We’d wanted to get into broadband, but we needed the models to show that we could do it properly and it would benefit our customers,” Davis says. “We knew it would be about 5,000 miles of cable, which is a significant investment. The pandemic highlighted the need, and so when the mayor asked us to take another look, we did some analysis that showed it was the right time, and that we could make it work.”

Approvals and other processes followed, and after state and local officials gave the green light, the build began. Currently service is available to around 70,000 internet customers out of the utility’s 200,000 electric ones. Some 12,000 have signed up, and adoption is picking up steam, Davis says.

“We’re not going in just one direction, but really all four points of the compass,” he says. “We went where we knew it was most needed, the most underserved areas, and have been growing from there. We believe everybody deserves to have equal access to the internet and have it at a good price. Our customers have received it very well – everywhere we go, the No. 1 question is ‘When will it get to my house?’”

Nashville goes with Google

In the state capital, Nashville Electric Service has long used fiber as a communication tool for internal infrastructure needs including communications between facilities, according to a representative.

Eventually that expanded to its current business-oriented offering, the NES Dark Fiber network, an existing network of “dark,” or unused, fiber-optic cable that runs throughout much of the Nashville metropolitan area.

“Shortly after implementing the network for NES, we evaluated the excess capacity and offered it to businesses and facilities who needed large-scale high-speed internet,” the representative says.

That network, however, is not currently in line for expansion into residential service.

“We are not looking to expand into residential services currently or in the near future,” the representative says. “There are a high number of alternate providers in the Nashville area, and so this limits the value and/or need for another provider. We are, however, expanding in areas of the community where our dark fiber product is a necessity for future industries, schools and hospitals – all locations that may need dark fiber.”

One of those providers is Google Fiber, which began promoting Nashville as one of its earliest rollout cities more than 10 years ago. The actual implementation, however, was slowed by a variety of factors, including a messy lawsuit between the Metro government and providers AT&T and Comcast, which sued the city over its decision to allow Google Fiber to hang its network from utiliaty poles where those providers already had a presence.

A federal judge ruled in 2017 that Metro overstepped NES authority to manage the poles, after which Google Fiber opted for “microtrenching,” or burying its lines a few inches below street level and then running lines under yards to connect to homes. And it’s been busy.

“GFiber is continuing to build out across the Nashville metro area,” says Nick Fischer, south region general manager for the provider, “with customers in East Nashville, Charlotte Park, White Bridge, Sylvan Park, The Nations, Hadley Park, Hillsboro/West End, 12 South, Music Row, Wedgewood/Houston, North Nashville, Hermitage, Madison, East Madison, Green Hills, Donelson, The Gulch, Downtown, Germantown, Chestnut Hill, Antioch and Smyrna.”

“GFiber has more than quadrupled our footprint over the past few years and we expect to continue expanding in Middle Tennessee for the foreseeable future.”

In addition to continuing to build out its network across Nashville, Google Fiber rolled out service in Smyrna last year, and currently is working to bring its network to both Murfreesboro and Franklin.

“While we’re currently focused on those projects, we’re always open to talking to communities who are looking for the right way to connect their residents to high-speed internet,” Fischer says, nothing that EPB in Chattanooga is “definitely a pioneer in municipal broadband internet, using fiber as we do … and they also continue to push the envelope on in-home speed.”

Google is now launching an early-access 20-gig service with Wi-Fi 7, and also is testing 50-gig service. It also wants to join hands with municipalities versus being seen as an interloper.

“We believe that communities have the right to decide the right way to connect their residents to high-speed internet,” Fischer says. “While most of our builds are organic, where GFiber builds our network in the right of way, such as in Huntsville, Alabama, we’ve partnered with Huntsville Utilities. In West Des Moines, Iowa, we’ve partnered with the city on a conduit network. GFiber has a number of tools in our tool kit to help serve each city in the way that works best for them.”

Access better, more work ahead

Although uneven in terms of timeline to connectivity, Tennessee’s broadband landscape is significantly more potent and widespread than it was just a decade ago. That can only benefit residents and businesses, especially those who have done without for so long, KUB’s Davis says.

“I would say some of the best internet in the nation is in Tennessee at this point,” he says. “You have many more utilities and co-ops providing complete fiber-to-home service, and the economic development is following. The communications companies are stepping up as well, so you have everyone getting more involved. Fiber is future-proof, so it really positions communities well to attract jobs now, and the jobs of the future. We’re only limited by the electronics we put on the end of that fiber line.”