Chattanooga’s EPB has launched their new community-wide 25 gigabits per second (25,000 Mbps) internet service, which is said to be available to all residential and commercial customers.

The 100% fiber optic network (with symmetrical upload and download speeds) follows EPB's historical launches of their gigabit and 10-gigabit services.

Hamilton County and the City of Chattanooga, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Convention Center is EPB’s first 25gb customer, making it the first convention center worldwide to offer the fast speeds over a broadband network.

This means the Convention Center will be able to simultaneously provide high bandwidth connectivity to thousands of smart devices at business conferences, e-gaming competitions, live streaming events and more.

“EPB is keeping Chattanooga on the cutting edge,” said Vicky Gregg, EPB Board Chair. “We are once again breaking the typical approach for internet service providers by proactively upgrading to the latest technologies in anticipation of future needs. Our goal is to enable new frontiers for technical innovation and job creation for our customers to the benefit of our whole community.”

Hamilton County and the City of Chattanooga have each dedicated $151,000 in infrastructure funding for a total of $302,000 to cover the cost of installation of new networking equipment and Wi-Fi access points throughout the convention center, as well as much of the cost of providing multi-gig connectivity for the next five years.

EPB is using new specialized Nokia symmetrical 25G PON (Passive Optical Network) fiber broadband technology to bring the faster speeds to businesses and residential installations.

“EPB has continuously pushed the boundaries of what a utility can do for a city, and by launching 25-gigabit per second internet service community-wide, we have solidified Chattanooga’s competitive advantage as the premier destination for the country’s emerging knowledge innovation economy,” said Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly. “This new, incredible resource will not only attract businesses, entrepreneurs, and top talent from across the globe, it will also increase quality of life for the tens of thousands of Chattanoogans who rely on high quality, top-speed internet for remote work. Simply said, this is an unprecedented boon for our local economy.”

EPB says that the cost for 25-gig service is $1,500 per month for residential and $12,500 for commercial, but not all network devices may not properly support the advanced speeds.