Smart Grid and Broadband - The Super Two-fer

The smart grid you've read and heard about lately will require robust communication systems to handle the massive amount of data required to make energy systems across the country more efficient and reliable. The need for these robust networks for smart grid will provide the best opportunity for public investment in broadband that will allow the United States to catch up with the rest of the world in the speed, quality and reliability of broadband.

The need for these robust networks is also the best opportunity to provide fast, quality, reliable broadband service to unserved and underserved parts of rural America. Every place with electricity will need smart grid; every place with smart grid will need super fast broadband. See how that works?

Several electric utilities in Tennessee (http://www.fiberoptics4tn.com/), in cities as large as Chattanooga and towns as small as Pulaski, have invested in the fiber communication networks to build out their part of the smart grid. Not only will these fiber-based communication systems be robust enough to support the smart grid, this same fiber provides the fastest Internet service available anywhere in the United States.

It is hard to describe how fast the Internet connection is with these fiber systems. You have to see it to believe it. And get this - the super fast Internet speed (that SSG-TN partner Robert Gowan gets to use when he visits his parents in Pulaski) is only about 1/10th of the speed it is capable of. In other words: they haven't turned it all the way up yet! The educational and economic development possibilities for the communities that have this fiber backbone in place are amazing.

And look at what EPB's customers in Chattanooga are saying about their new fiber-based Internet service: http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_154527.asp

Finally, take a look at what the Center for American Progress has to say about the opportunities for bigger, better projects if broadband and smart grid projects are combined: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/04/smart_infrastructure.html

More later on fiber-based broadband, and why most areas in Tennessee are deprived of this kind of Internet speed.