Dr. George S. Ford, the chief economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, last month released a bulletin contradicting claims made by a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) and an employee of the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga about the economic impact of the EPB municipal broadband network.
Ford wrote the bulletin in response to claims published by EPB last November by Dr. Bento Lobo of UTC and EPB employee William Plank in their own report, which asserted the public utility’s fiber infrastructure produced “$5.3 billion and 10,420 jobs” between 2011 and 2025, and created the ecosystem for new businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive.
Citing a 2020 study that determined increased high internet access generated a 0.26 percentage point reduction in the unemployment rate when urban and rural counties were pooled, which Lobo co-authored, the researchers applied the 0.26 percentage point decrease, and added an additional 0.16 percentage point decrease for some years, to determine the number of jobs preserved or created by EPB’s high-speed internet offerings.
In his May response, Ford noted that the 0.26 decrease in unemployment for Lobo and Plank should not serve as representative of Hamilton County, which is urban, as the 2020 study actually found only a 0.066 percentage-point decrease for urban counties.
“Estimating the employment effects in Hamilton County, or any urban county, using the 0.26pp effect size scaled by the working age population is invalid, ignoring the actual findings in LAW (2020) and using the wrong scaling factor,” the economist wrote in his bulletin.
Ford wrote instead that the “correct interpretation” of the 2020 study “is that the employment effect in Hamilton County is no different than zero.”
The economist then created a statistical model combining elements from counties, including Davidson, Haywood, Marion, Decatur, Moore, Roane, and Loudon Counties, and weighted their employment and unemployment trends against Hamilton County’s from prior to the activation of the EPB internet network in 2011.
He found the results were statistically insignificant, meaning that neither a purported decrease in unemployment nor an increase in economic activity can be attributed to the public investments in internet.
“In sum, the evidence presented here leads to a clear conclusion: whatever other objectives the EPB network may serve, employment or business growth in Hamilton County is not one of them,” wrote Ford. “Claims to the contrary are unsupported by the data, inconsistent with the academic literature invoked to justify them, and contradicted by modern empirical evaluation.”
The economist’s rebuttal of the claims was published even as other counties appeared to follow Hamilton County’s lead. In February 2025, the Harriman Utility Board first announced plans to launch its own internet network. By February 2026, the public utility reported 193 customers and 1,483 applications.
So far, the Harriman Utility Board is prepared to invest almost $10 million in its effort.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
