"We're talking about AT&T," Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, bluntly told a rally of business owners, families, local officials in the state Capitol in support of the bill which has stalled for years. "They're the most powerful lobbying organization in this state by far."
"Don't fall for the argument that this is a free market versus government battle," Gardenhire said. "It is not. AT&T is the villain here and so are the other people and cable."
The bill has been opposed for years by AT&T, Comcast and other providers who say it's unfair for them to have to compete with government entities like EPB. But EPB as well as some lawmakers like Gardenhire say that if the free market isn't providing the service, someone else should.
EPA attracted national attention five years ago when it announced it would begin offering one gigabit service to its customers. Late last year, EPB announced it was expanding that to speeds of 10 gigabits (10,000 mbps).
Among speakers at today's event was 10-year-old Ashlyn Williams of Bradley County who said she along with her parents and two older siblings lives in an area where they cannot get adequate Internet service.
"Just to check email messages is a big deal," she said. "I would really like to be able to get on different programs like KhanAcademy.com and Abcya.com, because they would help me to get a better education."
But she can't right now because the speeds they have are "way too slow."
On Tuesday, House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, told National Federation of Independent Business members meeting in Nashville that action on the legislation will probably be deferred until next year because the state Department of Economic and Community Development announced last month it is conducting a study of is now conducting a study of the issue.
That was in response to Dayton, Tenn., businessman David Snyder, who has a small Internet service.
"My business is in telecommunications and broadband; I've been coming up here on NFIB and lobbying my legislators three years in a row now," said Snyder, CEO of VolState Inc. and Revtel LLC.
"I have many thousands of feet of fiber-optic cable undeployed in my business yard in Dayton, Tenn., where I desperately want to deploy fiberoptics," Snyder said. "But I fear competition from my government more than AT&T. What can be done to settle this issue so I can go ahead and invest?"
©2016 the Chattanooga Times/Free Press (Chattanooga, Tenn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
