LCUB celebrates 1st area broadband customers in style
Jennifer, who has long been a passionate advocate for underserved broadband areas, said she was notified about a month ago of the milestone, nearly a year in the making for the utility.
“The reason they ‘honored’ me with being their first customer is because I started a group called ‘CUT—Citizens Underserved in Technology’ (composed) of about 130-plus of my neighbors, and we became fairly active in attending board meetings, calling LCUB, reaching out to legislators, etc., in an attempt to get ‘someone’ to bring us quality internet,” said Jennifer, who teaches at Farragut Middle School and is a Farragut High School Class of 1984 alumnae.
“I cannot say enough good about LCUB and their commitment to serving their community. They really want to provide the best Internet for the best price with the best ‘local’ service,” she added. “They are following EPB’s model (in Chattanooga), which has been successful. ...”
The Morrises have lived at their home for seven years. “The necessity of using Internet in our daily lives has grown exponentially since that time,” Jennifer said. “We did not realize or understand the underserved problem, and I knew that if we did not advocate for quality Internet, the problem would catch up with us.”
Her family’s own frustrating experiences with trying to find quality high-speed Internet spurred her into action.
“I became fairly vocal and met with Lt. Gov. Randy McNally a couple of times, spoke with federal legislators and their lawyers, filed several FCC complaints against T-Mobile and AT&T and wrote to the FCC, secretary of education (federal and state), as well as 90 federal legislators on committees working on the underserved problem in an attempt to highlight the problem of the underserved, as well as entice a provider to build out in our area. We are super close to AT&T fiber, but they do not want to deal with us.”
Moreover, “Many of my neighbors have been unable to apply for jobs that require quality home Internet or have had to rent offices instead of working from home (at their expense) due to our only option being satellite Internet, which costs over $200 a month and ran under 10 Mbps the majority of the time,” she said.
LCUB is in the midst of a three-year phased rollout of the grid upgrade project, an LCUB release stated.
“When completed, all LCUB Electric customers will have access to Gig speed broadband services and more.”
Details for broadband
Pricing for 1 Gig Broadband service starts at $65 a month, with LCUB-managed Wi-Fi services available, including a gigabit wireless router and full home network setup for an additional $15 a month.
Customers also will be able to add Voice over Internet Protocol telephone service soon, which allows voice calls over the Internet instead of an analog phone line, as part of their broadband package.
LCUB Electric customers can obtain more information about service offerings and check the installation timeline of service availability for their neighborhood online, at www.lcub.com/broadbandsearch
