The Clarksville FTTH project is serving its first customers! Congratulations to the good folks in Tennessee.
We’ve been following Clarksville here at LPF (coverage) because the Clarksville project is very similar to our own but is somewhat ahead of our schedule. The stories about Clarksville are like a little peek into our own future.
It will be awhile before Lafayette gets our version of the feel-good story about the first fiber customer that citizens in Clarksville recently found in their Gannett newspaper, the Leaf:
This week the new network went live, as the first public residential customer was connected and immediately able to utilize the utility’s cable television and Internet offerings…
“You can’t understand the concept of what this means to my son,” Berardo said. “He is so advanced beyond my time.”
Berardo signed her 15-year-old son Zachary out of school early Wednesday so he could be around while their home became firmly wired into the 21st century.
“He wanted to be in the whole thick of things,” Berardo said.
Zachary does not claim to be an avid video gamer, but was nonetheless wide eyed talking about the prospects of a new Internet connection of 10 megabits per second.
“That’s fast,” Zachary said, with a grin that bordered on mischievous
Indeed, that is fast—and that is the lowest, indeed, the only, speed that CDE offers. Zachary will be getting a symmetrical 10 megs. That level of service costs only $34.95. Ahwoogah! Actually Zachary’s mother is shelling out no more than $30 dollars extra for her son’s 10 megs since she’s also buying cable. If she’s getting phone service as well (and why not?) only $20 dollars on top of the first two services buys her son some of the fastest symmetrical bandwidth available in this country. —And you’d never heard of Clarksville, had you?
In comparison: 7 megs from Cox is $41.95 in Lafayette so Zach is getting 10 megs for about 20% less than I get 7. (Is that %20 a familiar number?) 20% less cost for 30% more service? That sounds pretty good all by itself. BUT: the upload speed in Lafayette is only 512 k— only 5% of the speed young Zachary is getting!
When LUS launches here I expect a 10 mbps symmetrical tier to be their lowest offering. It’s gonna be fun.