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LCUB considers offering high speed internet service

The internet service would come from LCUB's existing 83 mile fiber optic network.

Lenoir City, Tenn. — Internet treated like a utility.

It's something some Tennessee towns are doing successfully, like Morristown and Chattanooga.

The Lenoir City Utility Board wants Lenoir City to be next.

"What I'm interested in doing is making sure the infrastructure is there in order," LCUB General Manager Shannon Littleton said. "[Even] if it's not LCUB, it's someone else that can come in to make sure the internet connectivity is to those homes and to those businesses."

The internet service would come from LCUB's existing 83 mile fiber optic network.

The utility company started researching if this was feasible in November 2017.

Littleton said it started because a lot of their customers don't have access to high speed internet.

"I'm shocked," Littleton said. "I'm shocked we don't have adequate coverage in some of the areas."

One of those areas is off the Watt's Road Interstate 40 exit in Lenoir City, where middle school teacher Jennifer Morris lives part-time.

"We're only able to live there mainly weekends and sometimes during the week," Morris said. "But we have to keep two residences because my husband is self-employed and has to have a home that has high speed internet."

Morris said dozens of her neighbors and some of her students have to go to fast food restaurants, parking lots or libraries to have internet access to do their work.

"Educators just assume that all students have access to high speed internet and they don't," Morris said.

She and about 35 other people from Lenoir City attended the last in a series of public meetings about this at LCUB on Monday.

A representative from the independent research firm told the crowd their chance of getting the service "looks good," but more commercial businesses need to voice interest in the project.

The study is expected to be complete by the end of June, and no decision will be made until later in the summer.

If approved, Littleton said they'll need the blessing of the TVA, governor's office and other entities.

But he and other neighbors are pushing forward.

"We've got to make sure that our children are educated to the same level, they have the same opportunities," Littleton said. "We've got to make sure the businesses have the same opportunities to locate here as they do anywhere else in the state or anywhere in the region, for that matter."

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