GEUS High Speed Internet/Cable TV History

In 1999, Greenville, Texas' economic development leaders were unable to attract certain businesses and on the verge of losing existing companies due to a lack of high speed Internet.

In response, Mayor Sue Ann Harting asked SBC for a commitment to deploy DSL. That request was denied. The city's cable franchise, Time Warner, also declined to commit to cable modem Internet deployment.

Greenville found itself in a situation similar to one that many towns had faced years ago when railroads changed transportation. If the railroad was not routed through a town, that town just might die. What would happen to Greenville if the information superhighway did not come through the city?

Greenville citizens were not willing to take that chance. They took destiny into their own hands by amending the city charter to allow their revenue-only supported, municipally-owned electric system to build a hybrid fiber coaxial system to make high speed Internet available to everyone. Digital cable TV was offered as an option on that same system.

Once the citizens had committed to this venture, the city's incumbent telephone and cable franchises found ways of deploying that high speed Internet that they had only recently declared not feasible in Greenville.

In 2001, citizens began connecting to the city's state-of-the-art system that accessed all 10,000 of the homes and business in Greenville. Public acceptance has been very good, with more than 4,500 of those homes and businesses (as of June 2005) now choosing the new municipal services after less than four years in business. Financially, this non-tax supported venture was seeing black ink earlier than expected.

Public acceptance readily came from slightly lower cost to the consumer plus faster Internet speeds and more cable TV channels than the incumbents offered. (The existing cable company wasn't even offering ESPN 2 in 2000).

Consumers also welcomed the chance to have these multiple services placed on one bill with "one-stop" local customer service to handle all of the municipal services - one inclusive bill for water, sewer, garbage, electric and cable TV and Internet as options.

That information superhighway was built through Greenville and prospective businesses still ask if high speed Internet is available. Greenville's economic development gurus can now proudly answer, "Yes, and at download speeds of 8 megabytes/second".

We kind of think that President Roosevelt stated our position best when he said:

“Where a community...is not satisfied with the service rendered or the rates charged by the private utility,
it has the undeniable right as one of the functions of government to set up...its own
governmentally owned and operated service.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt