Chattanooga, long famed for speeding trains and infamous for unabated pollution, began remaking itself back when the Internet was still the ArpaNet by cornering the market on a new type of speed. From “Fast Internet Is Chattanooga’s New Locomotive,” by Edward Wyatt in New York Times:

“CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — For thousands of years, Native Americans used the river banks here to cross a gap in the Appalachian Mountains, and trains sped through during the Civil War to connect the eastern and western parts of the Confederacy. In the 21st century, it is the Internet that passes through Chattanooga, and at lightning speed.

‘Gig City,’ as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest — and now one of the least expensive — high-speed Internet services in the United States. For less than $70 a month, consumers enjoy an ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic connection that transfers data at one gigabit per second. That is 50 times the average speed for homes in the rest of the country, and just as rapid as service in Hong Kong, which has the fastest Internet in the world.

It takes 33 seconds to download a two-hour, high-definition movie in Chattanooga, compared with 25 minutes for those with an average high-speed broadband connection in the rest of the country. Movie downloading, however, may be the network’s least important benefit.

‘It created a catalytic moment here,’ said Sheldon Grizzle, the founder of the Company Lab, which helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. ‘The Gig,’ as the taxpayer-owned, fiber-optic network is known, “allowed us to attract capital and talent into this community that never would have been here otherwise.'”