WCA May 2014

From the Americas

city over that period, mainly in government, construction and finance. While it cannot be proved statistically how much the superfast network has contributed to economic activity, the Chattanooga system is at the leading edge of a push for ever-faster Internet and telecommunications infrastructure in a country that badly lags much of the world in the speed and costs of connectivity. Lafayette, Louisiana, and Bristol, Virginia, which have built their own gigabit networks, are among the American cities experimenting with municipally owned fibre optic networks that offer the fastest Internet connections. Google is building privately owned fibre systems in Kansas City, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Austin, Texas, and the company recently bought a dormant fibre network in Provo, Utah.  In Mr Wyatt’s view, the thrust comes in the nick of time. He wrote: “Telecommunications specialists say that if the United States does not keep its networks advancing with those in the rest of the world, innovation, business, education, and a host of other pursuits could suffer.” Volkswagen of America did not resist unionisation of its Chattanooga factory – but its satisfied workers did The city of Chattanooga attracted another kind of attention in February when, in what amounted to a referendum on the UAW (formerly United Automobile Workers of America), employees of Volkswagen’s plant there rejected union representation by a 712-626 margin. The defeat, which came despite VW’s neutrality on the issue, casts doubt on whether the UAW can hope to penetrate any foreign-owned assembly plant in the South, where organised labour has been traditionally regarded with suspicion. The president of the UAW has said that it must organise plants owned by German and Asian automakers if it is going to survive. Of about 1,500 Volkswagen workers eligible to vote, 89 per cent cast ballots after a preliminary period of intensive media attention and political arm-twisting. As reported by Detroit Free Press business writer Brent Snavely, one leader of the Tennessee state senate had threatened to block any incentives for future Volkswagen investment in Chattanooga if the union were voted in. (“VW Workers in Tennessee Reject UAW in Devastating Defeat for Union,” 15 th February). “We think,” said Gary Casteel, the UAW regional director who led the unsuccessful campaign, “it was unfortunate that there was outside influence.” Another disappointed commentator, President Barack Obama, was rather more forceful: Tennessee’s governor and one of its senators, he said, “are more concerned about German shareholders than American workers.” Volkswagen did not oppose the UAW at least in part because of the union’s openness to the creation of a Labour

Telecom “The Gig”, a taxpayer-owned fibre optic network in the American South, is a standout in a nation woefully laggard in Internet connection speed Chattanooga, Tennessee, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest – and one of the least expensive – high-speed Internet services in the United States. For less than $70 a month, consumers in “Gig City” enjoy an ultrahigh-speed fibre optic connection that transfers data at one gigabit per second. “That is 50 times the average speed for homes in the rest of the country and just as rapid as service in Hong Kong, which has the fastest Internet in the world,” wrote Edward Wyatt of the New York Times . (“Fast Internet Is Chattanooga’s New Locomotive,” 3 rd February). The locomotive reference is a nod to the trains that sped through a gap in the Appalachian Mountains at Chattanooga during the Civil War, connecting the eastern and western parts of the Confederacy. In the 21 st Century, remarked Mr Wyatt, it is the Internet that passes through the city, at lightning speed and attracting talent and capital along the way. With a new population in Chattanooga of computer programmers, entrepreneurs, and investors, signs of growth since the fibre optic network was switched on four years ago are unmistakable. Sheldon Grizzle, founder of Company Lab, which helps start-ups to refine their ideas and bring their products to market, told Mr Wyatt, “It created a catalytic moment here.” From the Times ’s review of Chattanooga’s recent history it would seem an unlikely place to experience such a moment. Named America’s most-polluted city in 1969, for its largely unregulated base of heavy manufacturing, over the last two decades it cleaned its air and fashioned itself into a destination hub in eastern Tennessee. When an aggressive high-tech economic development plan and an upgrade of the power grid by the city-owned utility EPB, the former Electric Power Board, moved the city toward the one-gigabit connection, Chattanooga was ready. Build it and they will subscribe . . . In 2009, a $111 million federal stimulus grant offered the opportunity to expedite construction of a long-planned fibre optic network, and EPB borrowed the remaining $219 million of the network’s $330 million cost. David Wade, the chief operating officer for the power company, said it became quickly apparent that customers would be willing to pay for the one-gigabit connection offered over the network. The city thereupon became a magnet for businesses requiring faster Internet service than that available in Seattle, New York and San Francisco. Although city officials say “the Gig” created about 1,000 jobs in Chattanooga in the last three years, the US Department of Labor reported a net loss of 3,000 jobs in the

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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2014