A city once declared as the most polluted city in the United States is slowly reinventing itself to become the next technical hub of the whole world. Chattanooga, Tennessee is formerly notorious for its smoke belching factories is now the first United States city to offer gigabit per second internet speed. The recent developments of the recent have put it in the center of the tech community and are now being considered to be the next Silicon Valley.
Dubbed as the "Gig City" Chattanooga recently offered a lightning fast internet service. Boasting a 100% fiber optic network, the project was jumpstarted after a $111 million grant from various federal agencies. The cities current internet speed is more than 50 times faster compared to the national average internet speed. The city's landscape, formerly dominated by factories and smoke belching foundries is now on the process of transforming into a miniature Silicon Valley and is currently attracting other big business companies to setup offices into its modest sub-urban location.
In 1969, the city was declared as the most polluted city in all of America. However, in the past 20 years the city is slowly eradicating indication s of its infamous past. The reinvention started with the revival of the Tennessee Aquarium and a $120 million project to improve the Tennessee River waterfront. These renovations have caught the eye of automobile manufacturer Volkswagen which decided to build $1 billion assembly factory on the location of a former plant for TNT manufacturing. Right now the city's one gigabit internet speed can easily rival those of big internet companies like AT&T and Google. Compared to highly urbanized cities like Atlanta or Nashville, Chattanooga's internet simply blows out the competition.
The effort to build Chattanooga's fiber optics network came out of the initiative to build an electrical grid to protect it from constant tornado and ice storms, a problem that has caused serious damage to the city. The city's Electric Power Board granted a $226 million fund that helped kick off the internet project hoping that the blazing fast internet speed of the city will attract new investors and businesses.
