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EPB Offering Services Local Businesses Need

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EPB in Chattanooga offers a service to business clients that offers a good reminder that local service providers have to be able to offer a variety of business services because different businesses have vastly different wants and needs. In 2012, the publicly owned utility began offering telephone service with cloud characteristics.

The service saves money by limiting the need of small businesses to commit to capital investment and personnel costs while offering the capabilities that larger firms with larger IT staffs have. A TimesFreePress article on the service from 2012 reported:

"We looked at an average business that had nine sets and eight lines, and it comes to about $320 per month, instead of thousands of dollars in up-front costs," [Katie] Espeseth [EPB's head of product development] said.

When businesses install them on their own, the systems and devices require employees to maintain, at a time when many companies are looking to streamline their IT departments.

"It really takes the burden of installing and maintaining your telephone equipment off your own employees and puts it with our company," said Espeseth. "In Chattanooga, if a small business can take the capital they were going to spend on a new phone system and invest it in their business, it makes sense to spread that cost out over time."

EPB did their homework and now provides a service that small businesses need at affordable rates. Understanding the needs of local businesses and offering a range of options is key to the success of local providers.

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Being a Gig City: Incubating Small Businesses

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This is the first in a series of posts examining a premier Gigabit Community - Wilson, North Carolina. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 85% of all jobs originate from companies with fewer than 30 employees, and 87% of businesses which started through business incubators have succeeded after five years. So Wilson, North Carolina, focused its "Greenlight" gigabit beam on its local business incubator, the Upper Coastal Plan Business Development Center. "Greenlight is driven by three guiding principles," said Will Aycock, the network's General Manager. "Supporting the economic health of the community, improving the delivery of city services, and enhancing the quality of life for the citizens of Wilson." Providing access to symmetrical gigabit speeds has allowed the community's small business incubator to take its services to the next level, to give budding entrepreneurs access to the future today and in a uniquely affordable way. According to Greg Goddard, Executive Director of the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Government, access to gigabit speeds has meant "Taking our incubation to the next level." Historically their business incubator has attracted "low tech" entrepreneurs: consultants, counselors, state associations, childcare and healthcare providers, people who need work space after normal office hours, even Chic Fil-A administrators, for employee training. The incubator provides a full suite of services including a receptionist, copy and fax machines, phones, 24 hour secure entry, kitchen, meeting rooms, training classes, access to experts, parking, and now, symmetrical gigabit speeds, all for an affordable price. "An 8' by 8' cubicle with those full-suite services leases at $275/month," he said. The goal is to stimulate budding internet-age businesses. Free Wi-Fi in Wilson And it has, even for young entrepreneurs elsewhere in the state. For a tech entrepreneur like Dan Holt from Wake Forest, renting space at this Wilson-based incubator lets him be part of the future, and to experience the possible which is impossible at his home in Wake Forest only 30 miles away. Dan is a self-described techie for a local Raleigh defense subcontractor but he likes to be known as founder of the Wake Forest Fiber Optic Initiative.
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Fiberhoods New Destination for Start-Up Businesses

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As more and more businesses consider broadband a critical utility, property demand reflects the need for high-speed Internet. In Kansas City, property designated as a future Fiberhood is already in high demand. Phillip Dampier reports in Stop the Cap! that tech businesses are relocating to get the jump on the gigabit fiber service, inching property values up in targeted areas.

And it is not commercial property in demand. Companies want access to the future gigabit network and are buying in residential areas, which are the first slated to recieve the fiber service. From the article:

Google is not officially selling fiber service to businesses just yet. Answer? Buy residential property in the area and move workers who could deliver increased productivity with faster Internet speeds.

That was the answer for Local Ruckus LLC, which is opening its new headquarters in a 2,500-square foot home in the first neighborhood scheduled to receive Google Fiber service.

“It just makes life easier,” CEO Adam Arredondo told the Kansas City Star.

Tech start-ups have been the target for the community since the Google Fiber intitiative. More and more are finding their way into the future fiber hoods and to the Kansas City region. The city is also using special initiatives to bring high tech companies and their jobs to Missouri.

Communities that are building their own FTTH networks should take a look at Google's approach. They neighborhood by neighborhood contests helped to make sure everyone knew about the network, increasing excitement. Marketing is tremendously important to securing enough subscribers to pay the debts of building the network.

Also from the article:

KCMO mayor Sly James last month unveiled Launch KC — an effort to attract technology companies to Kansas City, particularly start-ups.

James announced five companies and Union Station were prepared to offer free or “very affordable” office space in the city’s Crossroads district, the West Bottoms, and downtown. Office space is even available at the Kansas City International Airport.

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A Closer Look at FiberNet Monticello

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Monticello has been all over the muni broadband news lately, in the wake of a letter it sent to bondholders [pdf] alerting them that the City would no longer make up the difference between the revenues produced by the system and the debt payments. This came shortly after the company managing the network decided to step down. Over the next year, the reserve fund will make up the difference while the City and bondholders come to some sort of an agreement. The Star Tribune today published a good synopsis of the situation:
City administrator Jeff O'Neill said that the city has no intention of abandoning FiberNet's 1,700 customers, including about 130 businesses. "This system isn't going anywhere," he said. "We're not going out of business." Despite the problems, he said the city has one of the fastest Internet systems in the country that has driven down prices and improved services by providing competition.
The article also notes that prior to the City-owned network, the telephone company (TDS) provided very poor DSL service that was harming area businesses with slow and very unreliabile phone and broadband services. Without FiberNet Monticello, we don't know how many businesses would have been forced to relocate to be competitive in the digital economy. We decided to dig a little deeper to get a sense of what Monticello has received for its investment and difficulty. We previously examined the prices charged by Charter cable in town and found that households taking that deal were saving $1000/year. monticello-goodbadugly_0.jpg We also noted that Charter was almost certainly engaging in predatory pricing. After talking with other networks, we would guess that Charter is losing between $30 and $50 (conservatively) per subscriber per month.
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Public Ownership is Good for Business

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Opponents of public ownership like to claim that publicly owned broadband is somehow hostile to business -- this is a a major Time Warner Cable talking point in North Carolina. The reality is that community networks are incredibly biased in favor of local businesses. Most community fiber networks resulted out of economic development needs, when public leaders realize the fast, reliable, and affordable access to the Internet is a key to attracting businesses (and that massive absentee incumbents rarely care to invest enough to attract those businesses). Unfortunately, the argument resonates among a public that rarely remembers the U.S. economy was built on key public infrastructure investments -- from roads and highways to water works to universal electrification, if the public didn't own the infrastructure outright, it attempted to regulate in the public interest. And though regulators are frequently captured by those they regulate, the outcome is still better than allowing unaccountable electrical trusts to arbitrarily decide how much to gouge their customers. When Google was search for a community partner in building its gigabit network, it was not shy about public ownership -- we now know that a key factor in the decision was Kansas City's publicly owned electrical company. Being owned by the City allowed Google a single point of contact and an assurance that they could all work together to build the network. Surveying businesses in three early FTTH communities revealed dramatic savings:
In terms of fiber-enabled cost savings, 120 businesses in Bristol reported an average of $2,951 in savings per year, while, in Reedsburg, 33 cited annual cost savings averaging $20,682. Twenty Jackson businesses reported cost impacts due to fiber, with one large organization reporting a total of $3 million in savings. The other 19 Jackson respondents reported a net average cost increase of $3,150 per organization.
Make no mistake, public ownership of infrastructure is not anti-business, it is pro-business.
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