Commissioner Boyd,
I am a 57-year-old retiree living in the city of Kimball, Tenn. in Marion County. I currently have only one option for Internet service and that is through Verizon Wireless. We are on a 20 GB plan and myself and my wife often have to limit our internet usage around the third week of each month. Our granddaughter lives with us and attends the satellite campus of Chattanooga State Technical Community College in Kimball. She is required to turn in homework and take tests online and has to travel to the campus often late at night to perform these tasks.
AT&T has twice sold me the equipment for DSL only to later tell me that it will not work at the distance we are from their hub.
Blue Bridge Media comes within a quarter mile of our house but states that they have deemed it too expensive to serve any more customers.
I am 900 feet from existing Charter Communications customers and when I approached Charter regarding service, they told me that they would change me " $9,000 to do a study on the cost to run their cable to my house."
I understand that another study was recently completed and that you may be coming around to the idea of open competition for fiber internet suppliers in Tennessee.
Rural Tennessee really needs this and all of Tennessee needs it as well.
It is a shame that the only fiber delivered internet in Marion County actually comes from the North Alabama Electric Coop and had to be privately run to one subdivision (Jasper Highlands).
In Africa, portions of Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe have fiber internet but I am one mile from a Super Walmart in Kimball, Tenn. and I cannot get it.
This should be embarrassing to the leadership of our state.
Please help us by getting the suppliers out of the way who really don't want to service Tennesseans and allow those who are begging to serve us to do so.
Brian Bradford
Kimball, Tenn.