But the smart grid???s benefits to Chattanooga don???t stop there. It is the first city in America to offer up to a gigabit to every home in the city, beating Google???s more famous Kansas City fiber project by several years. More affordable services are offered at 100 mbit/s and 250 mbit/s. These are symmetrical Internet connections that offer 100 or 250 actual megabits uploads and downloads. In contrast, typical telco and cableco connections offer speeds ???up to??? 4 megabits, 15 megabits, or if you???re really, really lucky to live in the right neighborhood, up to 100 megabits.

The business world has noticed Chattanooga???s reliable power and awesome connectivity. Amazon has opened a new distribution center in Chattanooga with some 1700 new jobs and it is ramping up with hundreds more for the Christmas season (citation).

The restoration and operational savings are impressive, but then so is the broadband availability. Chattanooga.