City-owned utility EPB Chattanooga is planning to petition the FCC to allow it to expand its gigabit fiber triple-play offering to the Tennessee communities that neighbor Chattanooga. Following praise and tacit approval from the FCC, which is required by law to identify and remove broadband expansion barriers, EPB plans to expand to any community that requests gigabit internet including deployments in other states if it is successful in its petition. Incentivizing customers with a fast internet connection may be the easiest way to deploy a smart grid, given that you need access to the customer home to install the end-point smart meter. While not so applicable to the US market where utilities are broken into hundreds of local providers, such…