When Collin Boyce, the City of Tucson’s Chief Information Officer, was a young boy, he left his native island country of Trinidad and Tobago with his mother and three brothers and moved to Brooklyn, New York.

“We were poor but what my mother did for us in the summertime is send us to computer camps. And because of those camps three of us are in the IT industry today and the one we call the black sheep of the family is a neurosurgeon,” Boyce said.

He was joking about his neurosurgeon brother of course. But was dead serious about how being introduced to computer technology as a young kid led him into IT work and why it means so much to him to help build Tucson’s new municipal wireless network to provide Internet connectivity for low-income school students and seniors.

“This effort is an opportunity to give back what my mother gave me,” he said.

Tucson has hundreds of miles of fiber connecting the city’s municipal buildings. But, unlike a city like Chattanooga, which operates one of the premier Fiber-to-the-Home networks in the nation allowing America’s first Gig City to provide free high-speed Internet access to 12,000 low-income students in Chattanooga throughout the ongoing pandemic, Tucson has not built a fully fiber-optic municipal broadband network.

As the COVID crisis swept across Arizona and forced students to attend school remotely last spring, Boyce began to look for a way to ensure that the thousands of students who didn’t have Internet access at home wouldn’t be left behind. In a city with a population of about 530,000, an estimated 30 percent of city residents, or about 150,000 Tucsonans, don’t subscribe to wireline broadband, Boyce said.

Standing Up a New Network

“We needed to stand up some wireless technology,” he told us this week.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of community broadband at every stage of the game: from helping build political will during the initial stages of a project, to driving strong early take rates, to maintaining momentum down the road. Thoughtful and cohesive marketing, outreach, and community education efforts go hand in hand, and help broadband initiatives and networks weather the inevitable challenges that go with major infrastructure projects. 

On Episode 6 of Connect This!, Christopher and Travis Carter (CEO, US Internet) will be joined by Kim McKinley (Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber) and Kyle Hollifield (VP of Business Development, Magellan Advisors), both veterans with years of experience. The group will talk about all that marketing entails, including what we can learn from those that do it right and what gets left on the table when it's not part of the discussion. 

Join us Monday, February 8th, at 3:30pm CST on YouTube Live with this link, or watch below.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of community broadband at every stage of the game: from helping build political will during the initial stages of a project, to driving strong early take rates, to maintaining momentum down the road. Thoughtful and cohesive marketing, outreach, and community education efforts go hand in hand, and help broadband initiatives and networks weather the inevitable challenges that go with major infrastructure projects. 

On Episode 6 of Connect This!, Christopher and Travis Carter (CEO, US Internet) will be joined by Kim McKinley (Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber) and Kyle Hollifield (VP of Business Development, Magellan Advisors), both veterans with years of experience. The group will talk about all that marketing entails, including what we can learn from those that do it right and what gets left on the table when it's not part of the discussion. 

Join us Monday, February 8th, at 3:30pm CST on YouTube Live with this link, or watch below.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of community broadband at every stage of the game: from helping build political will during the initial stages of a project, to driving strong early take rates, to maintaining momentum down the road. Thoughtful and cohesive marketing, outreach, and community education efforts go hand in hand, and help broadband initiatives and networks weather the inevitable challenges that go with major infrastructure projects. 

On Episode 6 of Connect This!, Christopher and Travis Carter (CEO, US Internet) will be joined by Kim McKinley (Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber) and Kyle Hollifield (VP of Business Development, Magellan Advisors), both veterans with years of experience. The group will talk about all that marketing entails, including what we can learn from those that do it right and what gets left on the table when it's not part of the discussion. 

Join us Monday, February 8th, at 3:30pm CST on YouTube Live with this link, or watch below.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of community broadband at every stage of the game: from helping build political will during the initial stages of a project, to driving strong early take rates, to maintaining momentum down the road. Thoughtful and cohesive marketing, outreach, and community education efforts go hand in hand, and help broadband initiatives and networks weather the inevitable challenges that go with major infrastructure projects. 

On Episode 6 of Connect This!, Christopher and Travis Carter (CEO, US Internet) will be joined by Kim McKinley (Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber) and Kyle Hollifield (VP of Business Development, Magellan Advisors), both veterans with years of experience. The group will talk about all that marketing entails, including what we can learn from those that do it right and what gets left on the table when it's not part of the discussion. 

Join us Monday, February 8th, at 3:30pm CST on YouTube Live with this link, or watch below.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of community broadband at every stage of the game: from helping build political will during the initial stages of a project, to driving strong early take rates, to maintaining momentum down the road. Thoughtful and cohesive marketing, outreach, and community education efforts go hand in hand, and help broadband initiatives and networks weather the inevitable challenges that go with major infrastructure projects. 

On Episode 6 of Connect This!, Christopher and Travis Carter (CEO, US Internet) will be joined by Kim McKinley (Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber) and Kyle Hollifield (VP of Business Development, Magellan Advisors), both veterans with years of experience. The group will talk about all that marketing entails, including what we can learn from those that do it right and what gets left on the table when it's not part of the discussion. 

Join us Monday, February 8th, at 3:30pm CST on YouTube Live with this link, or watch below.

For communities across the country considering whether to invest in building a municipal broadband network, a new study published last week on the economic value of the EPB fiber network in America’s first “gig city” is a must-read.

The independent study, conducted by Bento Lobo, Ph.D., head of the Department of Finance and Economics at the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, found that the celebrated city-owned fiber network has delivered Chattanoogans a $2.69 billion return on investment in its first decade.

In 2010, EPB Fiber, a division of Chattanooga’s city-owned electric and telecommunications utility formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, became the first city in the United States to build a Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network offering up to 1 Gig upload and download speeds. In 2015, EPB began offering up to 10 Gig speeds.

It cost approximately $220 million to build the network, however, “the true economic value of the fiber optic infrastructure for EPB’s customers is much greater than the cost of installing and maintaining the infrastructure,” Lobo said. “Our latest research findings show that Chattanooga’s fiber optic network provides additional value because it provides high speeds, with symmetrical uploads and downloads, and a high degree of network responsiveness which are necessary for the smart grid and other cutting-edge business, educational and research applications.”

Image

Among the study’s key findings:

For communities across the country considering whether to invest in building a municipal broadband network, a new study published last week on the economic value of the EPB fiber network in America’s first “gig city” is a must-read.

The independent study, conducted by Bento Lobo, Ph.D., head of the Department of Finance and Economics at the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, found that the celebrated city-owned fiber network has delivered Chattanoogans a $2.69 billion return on investment in its first decade.

In 2010, EPB Fiber, a division of Chattanooga’s city-owned electric and telecommunications utility formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, became the first city in the United States to build a Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network offering up to 1 Gig upload and download speeds. In 2015, EPB began offering up to 10 Gig speeds.

It cost approximately $220 million to build the network, however, “the true economic value of the fiber optic infrastructure for EPB’s customers is much greater than the cost of installing and maintaining the infrastructure,” Lobo said. “Our latest research findings show that Chattanooga’s fiber optic network provides additional value because it provides high speeds, with symmetrical uploads and downloads, and a high degree of network responsiveness which are necessary for the smart grid and other cutting-edge business, educational and research applications.”

Image

Among the study’s key findings:

For communities across the country considering whether to invest in building a municipal broadband network, a new study published last week on the economic value of the EPB fiber network in America’s first “gig city” is a must-read.

The independent study, conducted by Bento Lobo, Ph.D., head of the Department of Finance and Economics at the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, found that the celebrated city-owned fiber network has delivered Chattanoogans a $2.69 billion return on investment in its first decade.

In 2010, EPB Fiber, a division of Chattanooga’s city-owned electric and telecommunications utility formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, became the first city in the United States to build a Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network offering up to 1 Gig upload and download speeds. In 2015, EPB began offering up to 10 Gig speeds.

It cost approximately $220 million to build the network, however, “the true economic value of the fiber optic infrastructure for EPB’s customers is much greater than the cost of installing and maintaining the infrastructure,” Lobo said. “Our latest research findings show that Chattanooga’s fiber optic network provides additional value because it provides high speeds, with symmetrical uploads and downloads, and a high degree of network responsiveness which are necessary for the smart grid and other cutting-edge business, educational and research applications.”

Image

Among the study’s key findings:

For communities across the country considering whether to invest in building a municipal broadband network, a new study published last week on the economic value of the EPB fiber network in America’s first “gig city” is a must-read.

The independent study, conducted by Bento Lobo, Ph.D., head of the Department of Finance and Economics at the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, found that the celebrated city-owned fiber network has delivered Chattanoogans a $2.69 billion return on investment in its first decade.

In 2010, EPB Fiber, a division of Chattanooga’s city-owned electric and telecommunications utility formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, became the first city in the United States to build a Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network offering up to 1 Gig upload and download speeds. In 2015, EPB began offering up to 10 Gig speeds.

It cost approximately $220 million to build the network, however, “the true economic value of the fiber optic infrastructure for EPB’s customers is much greater than the cost of installing and maintaining the infrastructure,” Lobo said. “Our latest research findings show that Chattanooga’s fiber optic network provides additional value because it provides high speeds, with symmetrical uploads and downloads, and a high degree of network responsiveness which are necessary for the smart grid and other cutting-edge business, educational and research applications.”

Image

Among the study’s key findings: