BRISTOL, Tenn. – Puzzled that another Tennessee city, Chattanooga, is attracting national acclaim and companies by touting high-speed Internet technology that’s largely available in Bristol, too, Bristol Tennessee Essential Services Power Board members Wednesday backed a BTES plan to launch an aggressive drive to recruit new businesses to town.
“We’re as good as anybody anywhere,” Power Board member Bryan Boyd said, regarding Bristol’s fiber technology. “But we need to get the word out about what we have.”
BTES’ chief executive officer Mike Browder agreed with Boyd, and said the multi-service utility will soon unveil a campaign to recruit new businesses by using its advanced fiber-optic network as a selling point.
“We’re going to do this with a big splash,” Browder said, noting plans that will include heavily promoting BTES and Bristol through national trade publications, media events and websites.
“We’re going to show everybody we are what we look like,” Browder said.
“We’re a really high-tech community with full fiber access and an extensive electricity system.”
In addition to 33,000 power customers in Bristol and Sullivan County, BTES has thousands of consumers who use some combination of cable, telephone and Internet service. BTES offers Internet service at 100 megabits per second, generally considered the fastest download speed currently available in American homes.
But BTES officials have been spurred to start boasting about the utility’s (and Bristol’s) fiber wares by a recent New York Times article on Chattanooga. In the glowing Times piece, Chattanooga was favorably compared to Hong Kong in its skill at using high-speed technology as a selling point for businesses seeking to locate in tech-friendly communities.
Browder and Power Board members were particularly amused that the Times article raved that Chattanooga will eventually offer Internet service at a lightning-fast one gigabit a second – because BTES soon will be doing the same, they said.
“Everything they’re doing, we’re doing,” Browder said of Chattanooga. “Everything they can offer, we’ll be able to offer. We need to start letting that be known.”
Power Board member Kelly Graham echoed Browder’s comments, and called on BTES to work with Bristol city officials on a coordinated plan to actively recruit new industry.
“We’ve got a great industrial-recruiting tool,” Graham said. “But we’ve got to get a system in place to use it, and attract businesses to Bristol.”
rbrown@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2512
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