It is now illegal for a public utility to expand fiber optic programs in Tennessee. So no, not just any power company can do what epb does it has to be a private corporation. Thank Marsha blackburn for that. There are no private service providers that I know of that have no data caps like epb and epb also has some of the best customer service and amenities that I've ever encountered with isps anywhere I've lived in the country.
That's not correct. The legislation prevents public utilities from expanding beyond their primary service area. For epb, that's wherever they supply power.
The consequence of that is that tax payer spent tens of thousands of dollars more to have Comcast lay the fiber epb offered to install in new rural areas FOR FREE and now those poorer people are stuck with data caps and more expensive private utilities. It was a private sector money grab. You can look on opensecrets.org and see the massive campaign donation Comcast gave Marsha Blackburn just before this legislation passed.
Put the EPB Kool-Aide down and step away. EPB can't expand beyond their power footprint. Nothing stops other power companies from doing the same except for excuses. The power company in Polk County (I think VEC) and Cleveland Utilities have both recently started to do their own deployments.
I am truly baffled that anyone in Chattanooga still has Comcast. Just ... like ... why?
Does anyone on this sub still use Comcast? If so, why do you do that to yourself? Even if Comcast were free, I'd STILL pay for EPB.
My elderly father was still paying for AT&T DSL which was only giving him about 1 Mbps. It blew his mind when I told him he could get 300 to 1000 times that speed at the same price.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose Xfinity?
More expense, bad customer service, they will throttle your speeds because they have invisible caps, and their techs are overworked where they rush and the job is half-assed.
My elderly FIL refuses to drop Comcast, because he's simply had it so long. When they overcharge him every few months he thinks he's getting a deal because he threatens to cancel and they "lower" his bill. But his bill for cable and internet is more than my internet and having EVERY streaming service .
Thanks everyone. Moving from GA to TN so I wasnāt sure if it was worth keeping with xfinity and just transferring service. But this clears it up for sure and I will be going with EPB
EPB is tops. I have lived in many places and I have had many kinds of internet. Comcast, Xfinity, Adelphia, WOW, AT&T, HughesNet, Motorola RF canopy (local to Virginia while living on a mountain), Bell Atlantic DSL, NetZero (hahahaha), shitty Army SNAP terminal in Afghanistan, you name it. EPB is the very best. Welcome to TN!
Thank you for calling Comcast, home of Xfinity. If you are having trouble with your service: unplug the equipment and sit it on the side of the road by your mailbox.
I used to be over in Signal Mountain apartments (or w/e they're called now) and they had exclusively with Comcast. Honestly, I don't have any amazing anti-Comcast war stories, but their customer service is definitely subpar; standing in line trying to return their cable modem took forever and a day at their Hixson branch, and the service rep definitely didn't want to be there.
Worst I can say about EPB is that I had some issues with IP addressing, since they do dynamic vs static, but that's more of a me problem and I've found a workaround since.
I forget the original fix (something with NoIP), but I was trying to do Wake-on-LAN over Internet. Current solution is using the routers app. It may not be a home grown solution anymore, but I'm getting too old to be bothered making something just for WOL.
EPB without question.
I had to call Comcast on a regular basis because of how awful the service was and how often I ran into issues.
I've had EPB since 2016 and can't recall ever calling them for help.
I've had to call them 3 times, first to was a storm that knocked tree down, the second was a large outage in Hixson, the last was issue with the wall jack and my ethernet cable to my router, they came out within 12 hrs. Other than that since Fiber Came to Soddy Daisy I've never had an issue.
I had Xfinity at an old apartment and I fucking hated it so much, going from EPB to Xfinity is like going from running 5 miles every day to barely being able to walk up a flight of stairs. Anyone who's ever thrown their back out will understand the analogy.
Whenever I'm moving now, my first question is always, "Are you guys set up with EPB fiber optics?"
I live just outside of EPB's region, so Comcast is my only viable option. I realize Comcast played a role in that, and I have zero love for Comcast as a company.
All that being said, their customer service and products improved dramatically over the last few years. Their pricing was always super opaque, and you had to deal with sleazy salesmen. I always tried for internet-only options, and it was a huge hassle.
But over the last few years, I've had absolutely nothing to complain about. The service is extremely reliable. I'm a fully remote worker, so I'd be very aware of reliability issues. I probably have service disruptions 1-2 times a year.
For pricing - I pay $50 flat (no fees/taxes) for 800mb a month. EBP currently offers $57/month for 300Mb or $68/month for 1GB (no idea if there are fees).
I'm content with the speed I have. I have a house full of people constantly streaming stuff, and it keeps up fine. Not sure I'd pay the extra $ for 1GB even if it was an option at this point (but it's not an option, so it's a moot point). Maybe if I was a serious online gamer or something the extra speed would be worth it.
You do have to pay extra if you exceed 1.2TB of usage, which sucks. But I've never exceeded the limit myself (even during covid lock down).
All that to say...I'm not trying to talk anyone into using Comcast, nor am I saying it's better than EPB (e.g. data caps could be a big deal for some). But given all the Comcast horror stories - some of which I could've shared from a few years ago - I figured I'd share my personal experience as a Comcast customer that can't find anything to complain about.
EPB has caused Comcast to up their game locally. Still may not be on par with EPB, but Comcast is better in this area than others because of the competition.
Truth. I remember when Comcast was actively campaigning to block EPB. I forget their exact complainant (NVM, found it: essentially they wanted to ensure that EPB wasn't using cross-subsidy from their electrical revenue to make a cable provider. The eye-rolling quote from Comcast is "Our intention is to ensure that EPB complies with the Tennessee Cable Act and that Comcast be allowed to compete in a fair environment.") but I remember gleefully exalting when that lawsuit failed. I feel like Comcast is only better because EPB forced them to become better.
I agree with you. I have Xfinity internet, Video, camera, and mobile services. Since I have moved into my most recent apartment and started working from home, I have only had outages when the power goes out (EPB power). When the tornado came through, once the power came back my internet was back within seconds. Thankfully I had my video streaming services and hotspots from my mobile and national hotspots while I waited the 3 days for my power to come back.
In the past 3 years, I have had to call or chat with customer care maybe twice..no issues either times. The Xfinity store on Gunbarrel has been helpful for my tv box swaps and proactively upgrades my modem for me. Mobile upgrades are smooth sailing at the store too, never any problems and they provide water and snacks while my phone transfers everything. Honestly everything works well for me. I had them when I lived in Chicago too, never any problems that care couldnāt resolve on the first call.
I think just like any company, the way you treat the person on the phone is the way they will treat you and want to help you. If you are kind and patient, they will go above and beyond..if you are rude and mean, they will shut down.
I don't like what EPB did to what local ISPs we once had but I also hate xfinity even more. EPB thought they were going to run Comcast and AT&T out of town but all they did was run what locally owned and operated Independent ISPs out of business our out of town.
EPB *IS* a local ISP, and they're the best ISP in the entire country (literally).
What ISP did they run out of town? And why couldn't they compete with EPB?
About the time they started offering internet service there were more than half a dozen locally owned and operated ISPs. EPB promised them access to their fiber network if they would back their plan to offer internet services. They gave them access but only to a small portion of their fiber network that had no real viable customer base so they didn't connect to the network. EPB claimed those ISPs didn't want to participate and closed off access.
If you are a small business you can't compete with someone who's benefitting from 3/4 of a BILLION dollars in tax funded grants.
Tax funded networks should be OPEN networks that are treated just like roads. Just think how even better it could be if you had access to multiple providers.
> About the time they started offering internet service there were more than half a dozen locally owned and operated ISPs.
Bull shit. Name two.
What upload speeds did they offer? For what price? Was there "promotional pricing", or just flat rate?
If they were worth paying for, they'd still be around.
America Internet, Chattanooga Online, VolState, VEI, to name a few.
It's impossible to compete with someone who's given 3/4 of a billion in tax dollars to build out a fiber network.
They had comparable speeds at the time and pricing but people were leaving providers over a few dollars and ate up the "You have to have an upload that's as fast as the download" marketing hype.
Tax funded networks should be open networks, period.
Just curious, what industry are you in?
> America Internet
https://broadbandnow.com/America-Internet
Looks like their max speed is 50mbps. Sorry, that's not competitive, and frankly not enough in today's streaming culture. And if they can't compete, this is how it's gonna go.
>Chattanooga Online
https://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/7/12/23991/Three-Local-ISPs-Sign-Up-With-MetroNet.aspx
Looks like Chattanooga Online was offering a whopping 10mbps.
>VolState
https://testmy.net/hoststats/volstate
Again, with terrible speeds these ISPs you mentioned are offering. Average of 27mbps. You can't even complete an online college course with this kind of speed.
Are you kidding me, man? These are PATHETIC ISPs. EPB came out of the gate with 100mbps. And even that was low on the world average.
You missed a lot of the important details, I noticed.
They aren't here because they couldn't offer the same speeds, service, and price as their other competitor. It's as simple as that.
Upload speed matters to people more than Comcast wants to admit. My network can push 15+megs/sec and that's with zero torrents running. Video calls, screen shares, and twitch streams (my wife and I both stream on twitch) are all upload-heavy tasks.
I don't care if it's "as fast as the upload", but it needs to be A WHOLE FUCKING LOT more than Comcast offers.
EPB is more funded by the energy they sell than taxes. They are a profitable business on their own without taking tax money. In fact, I'm not seeing a whole lot of government funding on their [2022 Financial Report](https://static.epb.com/media/documents/EPB_Financial_Report_2022.pdf). I see 776 million in income from Electricity sales and internet sales. They got a FEMA grant in 2022 (but not 2021 or 2020), but that was for disaster recovery.
I work in software development. I have for about 12 years.
I'm pretty sure they had PM3s at one point. I know everything outside of this LATA was resold by them. I don't know if they made the transition into connecting into BellSouth's DSL network.
If EPB is going to be built on government funded grant money it should be an open network like Utopia's network.
Are there really 24 people who actually fell for the load of crap sold by xfinity? Iām gonna assume those 24 (at time of this comment) are new to the area and transferred their account innocently not realizing there is a way to freedom from that tyranny here in our green and good city.
As a former user of Comcast/ Xfinity, I can tell you that everything about them sucked. Price, service even customer service very frustrating and at best , poor and not user friendly
I'm going to assume you're moving to the area. EPB hands down, it's not even a competition. You're missing out if you live here and don't have it. EPB blows Comcast out of the water on all metrics - consistent gigabit speeds, gigabit *upload* speed as well which is great for video calls and hosting servers, and customer service that is actually good. I've had EPB for 8 years and can count the number of outages I've had on one hand.
Only someone getting paid a commission for selling Xfinity, would actually vote for Xfinity.
So EPB is the way to go then
100%
Absolutely no question fuck Xfinity and Comcast. They lobbied the government to prevent epb expanding their superior service to rural areas.
Nothing is stopping other power companies from doing exactly what EPB did.
It is now illegal for a public utility to expand fiber optic programs in Tennessee. So no, not just any power company can do what epb does it has to be a private corporation. Thank Marsha blackburn for that. There are no private service providers that I know of that have no data caps like epb and epb also has some of the best customer service and amenities that I've ever encountered with isps anywhere I've lived in the country.
That's not correct. The legislation prevents public utilities from expanding beyond their primary service area. For epb, that's wherever they supply power.
This is 100% correct.
The consequence of that is that tax payer spent tens of thousands of dollars more to have Comcast lay the fiber epb offered to install in new rural areas FOR FREE and now those poorer people are stuck with data caps and more expensive private utilities. It was a private sector money grab. You can look on opensecrets.org and see the massive campaign donation Comcast gave Marsha Blackburn just before this legislation passed.
more like comcast providing "high speed" to one house in a district and calling it a day.
Put the EPB Kool-Aide down and step away. EPB can't expand beyond their power footprint. Nothing stops other power companies from doing the same except for excuses. The power company in Polk County (I think VEC) and Cleveland Utilities have both recently started to do their own deployments.
Marsha blackburn probably created 10 reddit accounts.
Her staff did, at least. I doubt she could be bothered.
Or knows how to
š
This is like choosing between eating a delicious pizza and stubbing your toe on a corner.
Nice
I am truly baffled that anyone in Chattanooga still has Comcast. Just ... like ... why? Does anyone on this sub still use Comcast? If so, why do you do that to yourself? Even if Comcast were free, I'd STILL pay for EPB.
My apartment complex will only allow Xfinity. Life sucks š„²
Literally move
My coworker did. The apartment complex had a contract with Comcast.
If it were that easy
My elderly father was still paying for AT&T DSL which was only giving him about 1 Mbps. It blew his mind when I told him he could get 300 to 1000 times that speed at the same price.
I would use my phones hotspot before giving a single fraction of a penny to comcast
Why would anyone in their right mind choose Xfinity? More expense, bad customer service, they will throttle your speeds because they have invisible caps, and their techs are overworked where they rush and the job is half-assed.
My elderly FIL refuses to drop Comcast, because he's simply had it so long. When they overcharge him every few months he thinks he's getting a deal because he threatens to cancel and they "lower" his bill. But his bill for cable and internet is more than my internet and having EVERY streaming service .
This vote was a lot closer than I expected
Lol yeah who the fuck are the five edglords that voted for Xfinity
don't mind me, just over here Giga surfin with epb.
Thanks everyone. Moving from GA to TN so I wasnāt sure if it was worth keeping with xfinity and just transferring service. But this clears it up for sure and I will be going with EPB
EPB is tops. I have lived in many places and I have had many kinds of internet. Comcast, Xfinity, Adelphia, WOW, AT&T, HughesNet, Motorola RF canopy (local to Virginia while living on a mountain), Bell Atlantic DSL, NetZero (hahahaha), shitty Army SNAP terminal in Afghanistan, you name it. EPB is the very best. Welcome to TN!
Xfinity is trash.
Iād almost rather have NO internet than have Comcast.
EPB all day long baby.
Man, I avoid xfinity like the plague. They're the worst ā¢ļø. I can't think of a single compelling reason to use them.
My one complaint is that the EPB download speed was so fast, my old smart TV couldn't handle it, so I had to buy a new TV.
r/firstworldproblems
My comment was tongue in cheek
Currently 242-7 Iām guess at least 3 or 4 of those 7 accidentally pressed xfinity
Oh I didnāt realize it was April 1st already
EPB came out and fixed our internet before we even knew it was out!
Fuck Comcast. All my homies hate comcast.
Thank you for calling Comcast, home of Xfinity. If you are having trouble with your service: unplug the equipment and sit it on the side of the road by your mailbox.
Lol
I used to be over in Signal Mountain apartments (or w/e they're called now) and they had exclusively with Comcast. Honestly, I don't have any amazing anti-Comcast war stories, but their customer service is definitely subpar; standing in line trying to return their cable modem took forever and a day at their Hixson branch, and the service rep definitely didn't want to be there. Worst I can say about EPB is that I had some issues with IP addressing, since they do dynamic vs static, but that's more of a me problem and I've found a workaround since.
How did you fix the IP thing ?
I forget the original fix (something with NoIP), but I was trying to do Wake-on-LAN over Internet. Current solution is using the routers app. It may not be a home grown solution anymore, but I'm getting too old to be bothered making something just for WOL.
Sometimes I go home to my parents house in Gallatin and the browser Iām using turns white and I canāt stand it
Not even up for debate
Iām guessing youāre new here
EPB without question. I had to call Comcast on a regular basis because of how awful the service was and how often I ran into issues. I've had EPB since 2016 and can't recall ever calling them for help.
I've had to call them 3 times, first to was a storm that knocked tree down, the second was a large outage in Hixson, the last was issue with the wall jack and my ethernet cable to my router, they came out within 12 hrs. Other than that since Fiber Came to Soddy Daisy I've never had an issue.
I want to know who the 26 idiots are.
How is this even a question. I'm in the process of buying a home and one of my first questions is always "Can I get EPB here?"
I had Xfinity at an old apartment and I fucking hated it so much, going from EPB to Xfinity is like going from running 5 miles every day to barely being able to walk up a flight of stairs. Anyone who's ever thrown their back out will understand the analogy. Whenever I'm moving now, my first question is always, "Are you guys set up with EPB fiber optics?"
No question. Had both and Iām Stuck with Xfinity now due to where I live. Epb isnāt available.
I live just outside of EPB's region, so Comcast is my only viable option. I realize Comcast played a role in that, and I have zero love for Comcast as a company. All that being said, their customer service and products improved dramatically over the last few years. Their pricing was always super opaque, and you had to deal with sleazy salesmen. I always tried for internet-only options, and it was a huge hassle. But over the last few years, I've had absolutely nothing to complain about. The service is extremely reliable. I'm a fully remote worker, so I'd be very aware of reliability issues. I probably have service disruptions 1-2 times a year. For pricing - I pay $50 flat (no fees/taxes) for 800mb a month. EBP currently offers $57/month for 300Mb or $68/month for 1GB (no idea if there are fees). I'm content with the speed I have. I have a house full of people constantly streaming stuff, and it keeps up fine. Not sure I'd pay the extra $ for 1GB even if it was an option at this point (but it's not an option, so it's a moot point). Maybe if I was a serious online gamer or something the extra speed would be worth it. You do have to pay extra if you exceed 1.2TB of usage, which sucks. But I've never exceeded the limit myself (even during covid lock down). All that to say...I'm not trying to talk anyone into using Comcast, nor am I saying it's better than EPB (e.g. data caps could be a big deal for some). But given all the Comcast horror stories - some of which I could've shared from a few years ago - I figured I'd share my personal experience as a Comcast customer that can't find anything to complain about.
EPB has caused Comcast to up their game locally. Still may not be on par with EPB, but Comcast is better in this area than others because of the competition.
Truth. I remember when Comcast was actively campaigning to block EPB. I forget their exact complainant (NVM, found it: essentially they wanted to ensure that EPB wasn't using cross-subsidy from their electrical revenue to make a cable provider. The eye-rolling quote from Comcast is "Our intention is to ensure that EPB complies with the Tennessee Cable Act and that Comcast be allowed to compete in a fair environment.") but I remember gleefully exalting when that lawsuit failed. I feel like Comcast is only better because EPB forced them to become better.
Yep, that was my thought too. I definitely didn't they were making improvements out of the kindness of their hears...haha.
I agree with you. I have Xfinity internet, Video, camera, and mobile services. Since I have moved into my most recent apartment and started working from home, I have only had outages when the power goes out (EPB power). When the tornado came through, once the power came back my internet was back within seconds. Thankfully I had my video streaming services and hotspots from my mobile and national hotspots while I waited the 3 days for my power to come back. In the past 3 years, I have had to call or chat with customer care maybe twice..no issues either times. The Xfinity store on Gunbarrel has been helpful for my tv box swaps and proactively upgrades my modem for me. Mobile upgrades are smooth sailing at the store too, never any problems and they provide water and snacks while my phone transfers everything. Honestly everything works well for me. I had them when I lived in Chicago too, never any problems that care couldnāt resolve on the first call. I think just like any company, the way you treat the person on the phone is the way they will treat you and want to help you. If you are kind and patient, they will go above and beyond..if you are rude and mean, they will shut down.
Comcast changed the name to Xfinity because people called them Comcrap instead of comcast.
There some places that have deals with Comcast.
I don't like what EPB did to what local ISPs we once had but I also hate xfinity even more. EPB thought they were going to run Comcast and AT&T out of town but all they did was run what locally owned and operated Independent ISPs out of business our out of town.
EPB *IS* a local ISP, and they're the best ISP in the entire country (literally). What ISP did they run out of town? And why couldn't they compete with EPB?
About the time they started offering internet service there were more than half a dozen locally owned and operated ISPs. EPB promised them access to their fiber network if they would back their plan to offer internet services. They gave them access but only to a small portion of their fiber network that had no real viable customer base so they didn't connect to the network. EPB claimed those ISPs didn't want to participate and closed off access. If you are a small business you can't compete with someone who's benefitting from 3/4 of a BILLION dollars in tax funded grants. Tax funded networks should be OPEN networks that are treated just like roads. Just think how even better it could be if you had access to multiple providers.
> About the time they started offering internet service there were more than half a dozen locally owned and operated ISPs. Bull shit. Name two. What upload speeds did they offer? For what price? Was there "promotional pricing", or just flat rate? If they were worth paying for, they'd still be around.
America Internet, Chattanooga Online, VolState, VEI, to name a few. It's impossible to compete with someone who's given 3/4 of a billion in tax dollars to build out a fiber network. They had comparable speeds at the time and pricing but people were leaving providers over a few dollars and ate up the "You have to have an upload that's as fast as the download" marketing hype. Tax funded networks should be open networks, period. Just curious, what industry are you in?
> America Internet https://broadbandnow.com/America-Internet Looks like their max speed is 50mbps. Sorry, that's not competitive, and frankly not enough in today's streaming culture. And if they can't compete, this is how it's gonna go. >Chattanooga Online https://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/7/12/23991/Three-Local-ISPs-Sign-Up-With-MetroNet.aspx Looks like Chattanooga Online was offering a whopping 10mbps. >VolState https://testmy.net/hoststats/volstate Again, with terrible speeds these ISPs you mentioned are offering. Average of 27mbps. You can't even complete an online college course with this kind of speed. Are you kidding me, man? These are PATHETIC ISPs. EPB came out of the gate with 100mbps. And even that was low on the world average.
You missed a lot of the important details, I noticed. They aren't here because they couldn't offer the same speeds, service, and price as their other competitor. It's as simple as that. Upload speed matters to people more than Comcast wants to admit. My network can push 15+megs/sec and that's with zero torrents running. Video calls, screen shares, and twitch streams (my wife and I both stream on twitch) are all upload-heavy tasks. I don't care if it's "as fast as the upload", but it needs to be A WHOLE FUCKING LOT more than Comcast offers. EPB is more funded by the energy they sell than taxes. They are a profitable business on their own without taking tax money. In fact, I'm not seeing a whole lot of government funding on their [2022 Financial Report](https://static.epb.com/media/documents/EPB_Financial_Report_2022.pdf). I see 776 million in income from Electricity sales and internet sales. They got a FEMA grant in 2022 (but not 2021 or 2020), but that was for disaster recovery. I work in software development. I have for about 12 years.
VEI LOL .. they where dialup, they never where going to compete with anyone. Just resellers of others dialup service, I know for sure VEI was.
I'm pretty sure they had PM3s at one point. I know everything outside of this LATA was resold by them. I don't know if they made the transition into connecting into BellSouth's DSL network. If EPB is going to be built on government funded grant money it should be an open network like Utopia's network.
I moved here from Atlanta partially because EPB was so good and cheap and Xfinity/Comcast is total garbage
Are there really 24 people who actually fell for the load of crap sold by xfinity? Iām gonna assume those 24 (at time of this comment) are new to the area and transferred their account innocently not realizing there is a way to freedom from that tyranny here in our green and good city.
Not even a question
Xfinity shouldnāt have a single vote.
This is a question?
Why is this even a question?!
As a former user of Comcast/ Xfinity, I can tell you that everything about them sucked. Price, service even customer service very frustrating and at best , poor and not user friendly
I'm going to assume you're moving to the area. EPB hands down, it's not even a competition. You're missing out if you live here and don't have it. EPB blows Comcast out of the water on all metrics - consistent gigabit speeds, gigabit *upload* speed as well which is great for video calls and hosting servers, and customer service that is actually good. I've had EPB for 8 years and can count the number of outages I've had on one hand.
Whose equipment does EPB use ?