This morning I rode up to Cummington to attend the kickoff meeting of Wired West, a group working to build “a universal, open-access, fiber-to-the-home network that is financially self-sustaining and municipally-owned” in Western Massachusetts. Universal broadband is as obviously necessary and desirable as universal electrification was in the 1930s. Forty seven western Massachusetts towns have authorized their town governments to work with the group, and many of them have appointed delegates to represent them at Wired West.
The plan is to build an open access, fiber-to-the-home network to serve all households (33ooo), business, and public entities in Western Massachusetts. The incumbents have demonstrated their lack of interest in providing the services that the region needs to participate fully in the 21st Century. We see that we need to do it ourselves.
It was exciting and inspiring! I felt like I was attending an early meeting leading up to the American Revolution.
A ton of work has already been accomplished by the steering committee, and we’re going to be moving forward to establish a governance structure and begin detailed planning.
I volunteered to work on the Governance and Media & Marketing committees, and to work as a liaison with the Shelburne Falls business community. I’ll blog about what is happening as we go forward.
Here’s some of the reading that Wired West provided for us:
I highly recommend reading Breaking the Broadband Monopoly, which details how incumbents and their allies in federal and state government have built ingenious and elaborate legal and regulatory impediments to projects of this type. It’s gripping, and I hope it makes you as angry as it made, and as resolved to change the current regime.
On the happier side, here is a Broadband Primer, which explores why Universal Broadband is desirable and essential, and explains why fiber-to-the-home is the way to go, and why even citizens like me, who have broadband now, will be better off when we build the Wired West network.
Wired West’s initiative depends on the successful completion of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute’s MassBroadband123 project, which will provide the middle mile infrastructure necessary to make high speed broadband a reality in our region. The date to watch here is September 30, when the results of MBI’s application for $45.4 million in federal funds will be known.
Middle Mile: “a broadband infrastructure project that does not predominantly provide broadband service to end users or to end-user devices, and may include interoffice transport, backhaul, Internet connectivity, or special access. These terms refer to infrastructure needed to connect COs, POP, hubs or data centers to each other.”
