Dalton Recognized Among Best Homes For Remote Workers

The City of Dalton is home to the nation’s floor covering industry as well as a center for other industrial manufacturing. Could the Carpet Capital of the World also become Georgia’s Work From Home Capital? A study conducted by an internet service provider recently named Dalton as the best city in Georgia for working from home and also the nation’s fifth-best mid-sized city for remote work.

“What that did is point out what we already know here, that Dalton is a great place to live,” said Dalton Mayor David Pennington. “It’s the great things we have here like Dalton Utilities, their fiber optic network, that let you do anything here for any employer at any time.”

High speed internet provider InMyArea.com published the study earlier this month using a number of different criteria for ranking cities. In particular, access to high-speed internet service and the affordability of broadband access was considered alongside the affordability of rental and housing costs.

Bringing high-speed internet service to Dalton’s residents has been a priority of City-owned Dalton Utilities for nearly two decades. The utility’s fiber-optic Optilink service connects homes throughout the City of Dalton to affordable broadband service. Alongside other internet service providers, the Optilink service is a big reason why the report lists 100% of Dalton’s homes having access to wired internet services, with 99% accessible to basic broadband services. The study lists the median rental cost in Dalton as $650 per month and the average cost of housing per square meter at $780.

“We’re the home of a $10 billion industry, and their front office staff is telecommuting already,” said Pennington. “We have stuff set up already to support that. And no matter if your home office is in Chattanooga, Atlanta, wherever it is we’re also right on I-75.”

With quarantines and lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year, many workers have shifted from an office environment to remote work. While there’s hope that the pandemic will soon ease and many of those workers are shifting back to their offices, there are indications that some businesses will be sticking with the remote work model in years to come. Mayor Pennington believes working from home will become much more the norm in years to come.

“All COVID did was speed up the process that was already happening,” Pennington said.