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18
Feature
Business Trend Magazine
The Gig City:
Chattanooga, TN
Alcatel-Lucent Joins $300,000 Local
Initiative to Break the Bandwidth Barrier
In October the Chattanooga Area
Chamber of Commerce’s Spirit of
Innovation event served as forum
for announcing, “The Gig City:
Chattanooga,” a new initiative to
accelerate the launch of businesses that
will take full advantage of America’s
first and only community-wide network
capable of delivering up to 1 gigabit (1,000
megabit) Internet speeds.
According to J.Ed. Marston, who
is leading the Chattanooga Chamber’s
engagement in the effort, the Gig City
brand will help community leaders
position Chattanooga as an emerging
technology hub.
“Gig City is a simple way of saying
that Chattanooga is minutes from the
mountains and an instant from the whole
world,” says Marston. “We are the only
place in America where you can develop
next generation Internet applications, test
them with real-world users and actually
launch businesses based on them. We’re
giving forward-thinking entrepreneurs a
2-3 year head start because their ventures
will be up and running in Chattanooga
long before other communities launch gig
networks.”
With that in mind, a number of
local and national partners are working to
recruit America’s brightest students and
entrepreneurs to spend the summer in
Chattanooga developing gig applications
and launching new businesses with up
to $300,000 in prizes and seed capital
available to participants.
Robert Vrij, Alcatel-Lucent’s
president of the Americas, added an
exclamation point to these plans when he
announced that his company is investing
$100,000 in the effort.
“We’re proud to partner with
Chattanooga as this extraordinary city
establishes a groundbreaking model for
demonstrating the direct linkage between
investment in telecommunications
infrastructure and economic growth.”
Earn $1,000 by helping
Chattanooga attract America’s
brightest students and
entrepreneurs to participate in the
Gig Tank. Visit www.TheGigCity.
com and tag the most tech savvy
students and entrepreneurs you
know. If you’re the first to tag a
geek who is accepted and attends
the Gig Tank, you win $1,000.
A number of community leaders gathered at EPB in December to hear updates on the local Gig City initiative and submit their ideas for moving it
forward.