Chapter Three of Seven

Being There

An Autobiographical Account of My Life and Times at Glasgow EPB

William J. Ray

CHAPTER THREE

A bit later in the 80s, after we had given up on the hydroelectric projects, continued dislike of the cable television company brought us back around to that broadband concept that was included in the hydroelectric plant vision. Telescripps Cable was not winning friends in Glasgow when they provided antiquated technology, normally stuff that was retired from their larger systems in Knoxville and Chattanooga. Eventually, Jeff Herbert and I opened discussion of the idea of Glasgow EPB building its own broadband network for Glasgow’s future. The Board really had only one question about this idea. They wanted to know if the network could be used to offer modern cable television products to Glasgow, in direct competition with Telescripps. My answer was yes…even though I was secretly not actually sure how it might work. That was the answer that the Board wanted. That discussion at an EPB meeting in 1987 turned out to be a very big deal.

A consultant was hired to advise us on whether our vision of implementing cable television, meter reading, telemetry, and LAN/WAN on one consolidated network, was even possible. Of course, we also asked them to make financial projections as well. After a few months, we got the results, and the report said that everything we envisioned was possible. However, the report went on to advise the Board not to embark on such a project. The reason? Well, the consultant apparently was partially owned by a cable television company, so it was no surprise when the Board was advised against building a new competitive network. Those five brave community leaders: William Bryant, Robert Lessenberry, Jack Goodman, Norma Redford, and Don Doty, wasted no time in ignoring that advice and directing me to go forward with the design and construction of the first municipally-owned broadband network in the United States. 

Things happened in rapid succession after that. Telescripps filed a couple of lawsuits against us, attempting to make us stop building the new network. The lawsuits eventually failed and Telescripps settled them. We started hiring more smart people and getting our existing team trained to build and operate a broadband network. Construction went on, nearly around the clock, until finally, in late 1988, we had the right team, we had finished the installation of the head-end electronics in the newly expanded EPB building, and we began connecting customers to the network. It was an exciting, frightening, and gratifying time. My team said they could handle this project, and as usual, they were right. This project moved us toward the aforementioned window to a new world of possibilities.

Building the broadband network was easy compared to operating one and achieving financial success. While I was anxious to get into the more exotic telemetry and meter reading via broadband network, it was the early 90s and Glasgow only wanted its MTv. So, the broadband project mainly consisted of competitive cable television for the first few years. Telescripps made that competition very tough. They gave up in the courtroom, but they declared all-out war on the streets of Glasgow. They lowered their rate for basic cable to only $5.95 per month, street by street, as we completed our network on those streets. So, my group of smart and innovative people got deep into competition mode. They invented ways to customize our installations to meet the needs of a variety of home television setups. They discovered the gold in locally originated programming. We began to videotape and replay every sort of sporting event that took place involving the children of our customers. We even struck a deal with District Judge Bennie Dickinson, to videotape sessions of Small Claim Court, and replayed those mercilessly! The whole concept of locally originated programming began to work for us, and very slowly, throughout the rest of the 90s, our cable subscriber numbers grew. They grew so much that by 2000, after Comcast had acquired the Telescripps properties, they struck a deal with us to sell out their remaining customers, and their network, to us. 

Even though most of the EPB team was committed to the cable television battle, early in the 90s we found some time to dabble in computer networking over the broadband network.  We used that capacity, initially, to connect our substations to a system that allows remote monitoring and control of the equipment at the substations. This capability began to show immediate improvements to the reliability of Glasgow’s electric grid, and we still use it, and improve it, bit-by-bit today. We also began to do little Local Area Network/Wide Area Network projects wherein we learned how to do things like read an encyclopedia off a CD-ROM drive at one of the schools by using a simple PC at one of our homes. Though these were not giant technological leaps, we were quite proud of this capacity and we began to understand just how big this idea of local area networking directly into all homes and businesses might become. In those days we hosted many other utilities and technology companies that had read about our network. You see, the dirty tricks that Telescripps pulled in their attempts to stop our progress, made us famous. There were big feature articles about us on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, as well as dozens of other publications. CNN even ran a feature story about us, and all of that publicity attracted the attention of some companies and individuals who also became a part of my story.