Ringgold, Ga., is a small but growing community, located in northeastern Georgia, just south of the Tennessee state line. Known largely as a bedroom community for Chattanooga, Tenn., and site of the Civil War's largest battlefield at Chickamauga, Ringgold doesn't boast any major industry or commercial operations. But it can boast about having what is arguably the most innovative telephone company in the U.S.

Telecom giant AT&T may begin rolling out its IPTV service this year, but Ringgold Telephone Co. launched IP video back in 2003, complete with caller ID on the TV, an electronic program guide and video-on-demand (VOD). While Verizon develops custom content for its FiOS fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network, Ringgold operates its own TV studio, produces a slew of local shows and locally based content and is conducting its own fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) buildout.

And although Atlanta-based BellSouth was building out a DSL network in its home state, Ringgold became Georgia's first telco to make the high-speed access service available to its entire service area back in June 2000.

Other telcos are just getting into home networking, while Ringgold's Home Solutions program sends technicians into the field for everything up to and including installation of a full home theater.

In fact, Ringgold has already tried and discarded things other companies are still discussing, such as Web access via IPTV. It also was early to the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business, running a trial two years ago that ended because of quality problems.

Yet for all of this, the man largely responsible for this record of innovation — General Manager Phil Erli — remains concerned about the future of companies such as his, as they struggle to compete without the resources of telecom and cable giants. Erli is passionate about providing the best service possible to Ringgold's 14,000 customers, but he admits that has become something of a daily struggle.

“Independent companies have always been entrepreneurial, and then the big guys come in with their economies of scale. That's the way it has always worked until now,” he said. “Now we don't have the availability of content that they have, and we aren't getting the technology that they can get at the same time. And that makes it harder for us to compete.”

For example, Ringgold doesn't yet have digital video recorder (DVR) capability, although it is working with its suppliers, Minerva and Amino, to roll it out (perhaps as early as this summer). Nor does Ringgold offer high-definition (HD) TV yet because HD set-tops are not available for companies using MPEG-4 over fiber-to-the-node networks such as Ringgold's.

“We have a lot of creative ideas like IM on the TV, e-mail and voice mail notification on TV screens, the ability to do commercial transactions like ordering a pizza with your movie. Why can't we get that?” Erli asked. “There simply haven't been many improvements to this system since we started.”

And that leaves Ringgold and other smaller telcos that have deployed IPTV with a product that isn't substantially differentiated from what cable and satellite providers can offer. Erli said independent telcos also are struggling on the content side, and to satisfy content owners, Ringgold had to install encryption software, which is both expensive to purchase and time-consuming to implement.

“I will be fully encrypted May 1, but the problem I have is that we are being treated differently than cable,” he said.

There is also programming that Ringgold can't offer, such as Comcast Sports Net, because of contractual requirements and restrictions. “To offer that programming, I have to run free ads for Comcast and Charter,” he said. “So we don't do it.”

Despite being first out of the gate with virtually every new technology, Ringgold now finds itself competing with a cable company that has more content, plus access to VOD, DVR and HD programming.

But although Erli is very candid in sharing his concerns, the former industry consultant is more a man of action than words, and he has infused Ringgold's 100 employees with his enthusiasm.

Alice Evitt Bandy, president of Ringgold and granddaughter of founder Jim Evitt, hired Erli in 1999. Today he is credited with being the driving force behind Ringgold's transformation. And according to Tim Colby, senior vice president sales and marketing for CopperCom — Ringgold's softswitch provider — Erli is at the very highest end of the curve in the rural LEC space in terms of progressiveness.

“Phil gets it. He's been very innovative,” Colby said.

For his part, Erli is quick to share credit with his employees and with his boss. “She's been extraordinarily generous,” he said of Bandy. “She's very supportive of all that we do.”

So far, Erli has done a lot. He has positioned the telco as a technology leader, moved it into a picturesque 34-acre headquarter campus, renovated a former tufting plant into an office and built facilities to house the company's fleet of trucks, its cables and virtually everything needed to run a state-of-the-art telco.

The new facility includes Ringgold's digital studio, in which it films a wide variety of local content, much of it starring Ringgold employees. It also produces 10 different shows, which air on Channel 2, its NexTV channel. Those shows then become part of the VOD library. The company has amassed 207 VOD “assets,” including educational programming for local students.

The take rate for NexTV's VOD service is about 20%, with those households taking at least one movie per month, Erli said.

Ringgold productions you won't see from a cable provider include: “Kooking with Kimberly,” which features Kimberly Wheeler, who is public relations and marketing manager when she's not showing NexTV viewers how to make sun-dried tomato and pesto pizza. Purchasing Manager Nora Faulkenberry hosts “Gardening Catoosa Style,” which goes on location to explain how to plant and care for local gardens. She tailors each show to specific seasonal efforts.

NexTV also features a fitness show, a women's talk show patterned after “The View,” a review of the local arts scene, high school football games and other local sporting events, and math tutorials for seventh and eighth graders.

The latter classes are recent additions and highlight local teachers. Like all other locally produced content, the math tutorials become part of Ringgold's library of shows and other content, which can be accessed on-demand.

“I'm so proud of our people here,” Erli said. “One of our vice presidents is a cameraman for the football games, which have three camera angles, and we have two local guys who provide the play-by-play for free because they love it. That's something cable doesn't have: our local content. We're open to anyone who comes up with a creative idea.”

Erli's staff includes a video manager, a local video content coordinator and a digital media specialist, all of who work in the digital studio. The two latest projects are a children's series, which features local kids as audience members and participants, and an ambitious documentary series focused on preserving and building interest in local history.

“To us, local is local. You are going to see someone you know on TV,” Erli said. “This is a historic area, and we wanted to do something with the oral histories of the seniors who remember some of these events.”

The first episode in the series focused on the Old Stone Church, a historic structure that became a hospital for both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. It is thought to be where the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” was first played.

The 17-minute documentary premiered in mid-April at a VIP event for local elected officials and businessmen. Ringgold is hoping to line up local sponsors for six more segments to be filmed over the next two years.

“It's our plan to get these on Georgia Public Broadcasting Service and maybe even the History Channel,” Erli said. “We think this could be important for economic development of this area, to draw more tourists.”

One of the segments will focus on the Chickamauga Battlefield and the ghosts said to linger there, said Terry McGregor, video production manager.

Becoming a video producer hasn't taken Ringgold away from its roots, however. At the heart of the company's operation is a customer call center that operates around the clock, delivering a level of service in which Erli takes great pride. His customer service representatives are trained to handle voice, data and video issues, and the company is proud enough of its customer testimonials to post them on its Web site.

The call center provides locally based customer service and has created a pool of employees from which Erli has drawn his broadband engineers and some of his digital production staff. Call response time is measured in seconds, and consumers don't have to wade through a long menu of push-button options to reach a human being. That level of concern for his customers is clearly what fuels everything Erli and Ringgold Telephone do.

“My whole world is these 14,000 customers,” he said. “It would be a shame if this company couldn't continue to survive because it would change the nature of this community. These 14,000 homes would be no big deal to a bigger company.”

As it is, Ringgold Telephone is the single largest supporter of the local school district and provides 14 mentors — Erli being one — to the local schools as well. The company holds a junior golf tournament that draws young golfers worldwide and raises $50,000 a year for local charities.

Its Web site, www.catt.com, has also become a prime source of local information, drawing 140,000 discrete hits per month. Erli believes that's largely because the community has a weekly newspaper but a daily need for news.

He continues to make big plans. Although the MVNO effort two years ago failed and was, by Erli's admission, “a disaster,” he still hopes to offer wireless service to his customers. He has offered to build towers or distributed antennas for a service provider willing to work in that direction because he realizes many newer residents of Ringgold are opting not to buy a wireline phone.

Ringgold is registered as a CLEC in both Tennessee and Georgia and will soon begin offering voice-over-IP service (VoIP) in Chattanooga and in the nearby Georgia community of Dalton. It doesn't plan to offer the service in Ringgold, unless it means retaining a customer because VoIP service would mean less revenue than the current offering, Erli said.

Local businesses, however, can get VoIP service through Ringgold Telephone, using a VoIP PBX. And the company is experimenting with unified messaging that goes beyond traditional find me/follow me service to provide a unified approach to voice mail, e-mail and fax and builds on presence capability.

“I want to provide a single-number service,” Erli said. “And I want to incorporate some voice recognition and text-to-speech technology as well.”

The final product would be similar to the one Wildfire introduced in the '90s, but Erli admits it's 12 months away, at least.

The company will continue with its FTTH buildout in greenfield opportunities and is exploring doing a project in this area, including overbuilding, but Erli admits the economics aren't there yet.

Ringgold will also explore WiMAX technology and other options as they unfold.

Then there are Erli's plans to build a technology lab on Ringgold's new campus that would include an alternative high school aimed at reducing the relatively high local dropout rate.

An active member of the World Future Society, he believes in looking forward. And he's sometimes frustrated that the telecom industry doesn't keep pace.

“Technology is passing us by,” he said. “AT&T showed off the videophone at the 1964 World's Fair, and it still doesn't exist — what does that say about our industry?”

But technology won't be passing by Ringgold, Ga., anytime soon, not if Phil Erli has something to say about it.