1. 33SPRING 2016 • BIZTECHMAGAZINE.COM
T
here are few everyday
business situations more
frustrating than a slow,
unreliable Internet
connection. As more
office applications rely on the Internet,
business slows to a crawl without it.
That was certainly the case for Jan
Gusich, founder and CEO of AKHIA, a
public relations and integrated market-
ing company in Hudson, Ohio, and her
60 creative designers, writers and
support staff.
The company’s Internet connection
was so slow that uploading art files to
clients and printers could take up to an
hour — even if the transmission went
smoothly. If the Internet went down,
which it often did, some employees
would have to pack up and head home
or to a coffee shop to get work done.
Gusich wanted to invest in faster,
more reliable Internet, but it simply
wasn’t available in Hudson, a suburb
of Akron. Her only options were two
commercial Internet providers, but
neither would upgrade beyond their
sub-broadband, copper-based
capabilities.
“I kind of accepted that this was the
way it was going to be,” says Gusich, who
started her business 20 years ago in her
Hudson home’s dining room and has
since grown it into one of Ohio’s most
successful agencies. “I figured, we’ll have
some frustrating days. We’ll have to leave
the office on occasion. And we’ll just live
with that and do what we have to do.”
Then she heard in early 2015 that the
city of Hudson was planning to become
its own Internet service provider (ISP)
with reliable citywide fiber-optic
connectivity and 1 gigabit speeds.
“As soon as I heard about it, I was in,”
Gusich recalls. She quickly volunteered
her firm to take part in an initial pilot
project and is now fully connected.
Now, AKHIA’s huge files upload in
minutes, and the Internet connection
hasn’t gone down once. “The employees
are happier, we’re more productive, and
I don’t have frustrated clients wonder-
ing why we can’t get something to them
faster,” Gusich says. “As the owner of the
business, it has taken a huge weight off
of me.”
ConnectedCity
Government-built
high-speed
networkskeep
businesses
booming.
ConnectedCity
The city of Hudson, Ohio,
courts businesses by running its
own public broadband network, say
Bill Hilbish and Frank J. Comeriato Jr.
by HEATHER B. HAYES
photography by ALEX SLITZ

2. 34 BIZTECHMAGAZINE.COM • SPRING 2016
Product Ad #11
Page 35
*SOURCE: Institute for Local Self-Reliance, “Community Network Map,” October 2015
Read how other SMBs use IT at biztechmag.com/small-business.
backbone provider and ramped up
billing and customer service functions.
In September 2015, Velocity
Broadband began connecting busi-
nesses. “We have a backlog of companies
that want us to hook them up,” Hilbish
says. The broadband network has also
helped Hudson court other companies.
“As soon as we announced the
1 gigabit service, we got calls from
businesses outside the city who wanted
in,” says Comeriato. “Realizing they’d
have access to fast, reliable broadband
was the tipping point in finally making
the decision to come to Hudson.”
LEADING THE WAY
Hudson is one of an increasing number
of municipalities launching broadband
networks to help existing businesses
and attract new ones, says Christopher
Mitchell, director of community
broadband networks at the Institute
for Local Self-Reliance.
“Many communities have realized
that if they do not invest in themselves,
they will be left behind in the digital
economy,” Mitchell says.
Chattanooga, Tenn., offers one such
success story. In 2010, the city’s Electric
Power Board (EPB) utility unveiled a
network offering speeds of 1 gigabit per
second, which was then the fastest in
the country. EPB recently rolled out
a 10Gbps service.
The city’s network began when
officials decided to modernize the power
grid by laying a fiber network throughout
its 600-square-mile service area.
“We essentially overlaid a communi-
cations network and devices that could
help us better understand the health
and performance of our grid in real time,”
says Danna Bailey, EPB’s vice president
of corporate communications.
“However, we knew that high-speed
Internet would also be critical infrastruc-
ture in the future, so we decided to try
to also make the network available to
the community.”
While other local providers offer
high-speed Internet service, more
than 75,000 Chattanooga residents and
businesses get broadband from the city.
According to a study by Bento Lobo,
a professor at the University of Tennessee
at Chattanooga, the network has gener-
ated between $865 million and $1.3 billion
in economic and social benefits while
creating as many as 5,200 new jobs.
Now known as Gig City, Chattanooga
has become a hot spot for startups,
entrepreneurs and 3D printing activity.
“Having this sort of connectivity is
opening up lines of creativity that may
have been there before but couldn’t be
easily explored,” Bailey says. “More
than that, it’s giving us this new level
of confidence and enthusiasm about
the future.” n
BROADBAND BECKONS
Hudson, Ohio, has long been an ideal
place for business. More than 900
companies, including Jo-Ann Fabric and
Craft Stores, make their home in this city,
attracted by its location, educated
workforce and charming downtown.
The lack of ultrafast broadband,
however, put that business-friendly
reputation in jeopardy.
“A lot of our businesses are very
data-intensive, and we had them telling
us over and over, ‘We can’t grow here,
we can’t expand,’” recalls Assistant City
Manager Frank J. Comeriato Jr.
“And new companies that we were
trying to attract to Hudson were telling
us, ‘There’s no way. You don’t have the
bandwidth we need.’”
That’s why the city decided to take a
leap of faith and become its own service
provider. “We had no choice, really,”
says Bill Hilbish, IS manager for
Hudson.
“Businesses
need access
to fast, reliable
bandwidth if
they’re going to
compete, and we
needed to do
whatever we
could to provide
that to them.”
With an
initial $800,000
investment,
Hudson officials
last spring began
laying the groundwork for the Velocity
Broadband fiber-optic network for
businesses. Hilbish and his team built
a new data center that houses a Cisco
Systems 9000 series router, Cisco
Catalyst and Power over Ethernet
switches, Cisco ASA firewalls, APC
Symmetra UPS switches and VMware
virtual servers, among other equipment.
The team also buried fiber-optic
lines throughout the city, put out bids
for a primary and redundant Internet
Broadband BenefitsA municipal broadband network leads to a number of benefits for the local
business environment, according to Christopher Mitchell, director of
community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
A municipal network can, for example:
Boost the capabilities of healthcare providers, schools, research
organizations and financial institutions
Draw new residents to the area, providing a larger, more qualified
workforce from which businesses can recruit
Provide more opportunity for employees to telecommute
and for home-based businesses to excel
Attract new companies to the area (and retain existing ones),
which enables job creation and new opportunities for growth
Enable an incubation environment that encourages new
entrepreneurial activity and startups
27The number of U.S.
municipally owned
networks that
offer businesses
broadband service
of at least 1Gbps*

3. 36 37BIZTECHMAGAZINE.COM • SPRING 2016 SPRING 2016 • BIZTECHMAGAZINE.COM
ONLINE[web CTA link] http://www.biztechmagazine.com/small-business
[story type] Feature
[industry] small business
[print title] Broader Business
[web hed] Businesses Benefit from Municipal Broadband
[teaser/web dek] Companies gain new opportunities to excel thanks to local government’s willingness to invest in high-speed
networks.
[byline/author bio] Heather B. Hayes
[main topic] Networking
[subtopics] Ethernet
[tweets]
How #broadband attracts companies like @JoAnn_Stores and @LittleTikes to Hudson, Ohio.
Municipal broadband brings #SMBs big Internet power
Firms frustrated by a lack of ISP choice are pleasantly surprised that municipalities are stepping up to build their own
#broadband networks.
[Twitter or other social handles]
@EPB_Chattanooga
@AKHIA
[links]
https://www.cdw.com/it-solutions/networking/overview.aspx
[states] Ohio, Tennessee
[customers] Hudson, Chattanooga, Independence
[brands] APC, Cisco, VMware
[keywords] broadband, network, gigabit, service
[html title] Municipal Broadband Attracts Business
[bulk list/digital contacts]
Heather B. Hayes
P.O. Box 69
Clifford, VA 24533
(434) 238-7791 (Mobile)
hbhayes@ntelos.net
Frank J. Comeriato, Jr.
Assistant City Manager
City of Hudson
115 Executive Parkway
Suite 400
Hudson, Ohio 44236
fcomeriato@hudson.oh.us
330-342-1708
Bill Hilbish, IS Manager
City of Hudson
115 Executive Parkway
Suite 400
Hudson, Ohio 44236
bhilbish@hudson.oh.us
Danna Bailey
Vice President of Corporate Communications
Electric Power Board
P.O. Box 182255
Chattanooga, TN 37422
423-648-1293
baileydk@epb.net
Christopher Mitchell
Director, Community Broadband
Networks
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
(ILSR)
2720 E 22nd St
Minneapolis, MN 55406
612-276-3456 x209
christopher@newrules.org
Jan Gusich
CEO
AKHIA
85 Executive Pkwy., Suite 400
Hudson, OH 44236
(330) 463-5650 (Office)
(216) 509-6862 (Mobile)
jan@akhia.com