New Marlborough —In what harkens back to the rural electrification efforts of yesteryear, Western Massachusetts is on the brink of a transformation as towns vote, one after the other with overwhelming margins, to approve bonds for the installation of fiber optic cables for high speed Internet connectivity, also known as broadband, and now considered a basic necessity for progress and rural economic sustainability.
Since town meeting season began this spring, 16 towns have (as of May 26) approved a total of $26 million between them, for wiring Western Massachusetts with what is called “the last mile,” with help from the the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), a state apparatus that funds and maps out broadband expansion. The legislature voted to earmark $50 million for towns in the state that are considered “un-served” by sufficient internet speed; $40 million was allocated for the last mile in Western Mass.
That $40 million from the state, however, is only one-third of what it will cost, and the towns have to bear the rest because giants like Time Warner Cable and Verizon won’t; there is little profit motive to be gained in towns with miles and miles of road and relatively few customers.
This is where not-for-profit municipal cooperative Wired West stepped in, said Tim Newman, a filmmaker who is a passionate advocate of running fiber optic cable into these hills, and who sits on Wired West’s Board of Directors.
“Wired West exists because people like me realized that Verizon and other cable companies are not in the public good business, but in the profit business. They can’t justify the expenditure.”
Also, if towns don’t have enough cash to pay for it, they can borrow at a much better rate than the cable companies, with 20-year bonds and 4 percent interest rates, and they don’t have to worry about shareholders, Newman added.
An area is considered un-served if it has less than 25 megabits of speed available. The Federal Communication Commission’s (F.C.C.) definition of sufficient speed is 25 megabits or better, Newman says, and higher speeds are necessary now as a result of the increased use of high bandwidth video applications like YouTube and Netflix.
Broadband is considered so important, The New York Times recently reported, that the F.C.C. Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed helping the poor by subsidizing it. The Commission will vote on the matter on June 18, according to The Times.
Tim Newman addressing an information meeting in New Marlborough on the Wired West initiative.
Newman, a long-time New Marlborough resident, said that out of 45 un-served towns, 32 have joined Wired West and are involved in the project; 16 have voted on the bond authorizations. Town meetings will continue into June, and two, including New Marlborough, have postponed their votes until fall.
“I did not expect this high a success rate,” Newman said, adding that the importance of bringing fast connectivity to these areas cannot be overstated. “It will literally be transformative,” he said, “with an enormous impact on education and economic development. If you talk to real estate brokers now, they are unable to sell homes that don’t have connectivity at decent prices. People are not interested.”
Indeed, Berkshire Property Agents’ co-founder and agent, Tim Lovett, said that one of his buyer-clients recently told him that “high-speed internet access is becoming as important in a residence as running water and electricity.” Lovett added that “this is an incredible opportunity, a watershed moment for us to move forward and be as competitive as we possibly can and stay viable as a community in a global economy.”
Lovett, who works out of a Great Barrington office, but lives in Monterey with DSL service, says that it is becoming “exponentially more common” for prospective buyers to nix homes without high-speed service. “I don’t want to be a negative realtor, but it’s going to get to the point where you won’t be able to sell your house. Real estate values are absolutely going to be dependent on access. This will be more important every selling season.”
Lovett says that the “trickle down,” from the lack of service is damaging, and affects property values, which in turn affects taxes. “In order to keep our [property] values we have to be wired.”
While Lovett does not have children, he says he wants children here “to live and grow and learn in a competitive environment, to compete with kids from all over the world. I don’t want to lose the next generation because we don’t have access, when it’s so simple, and the formula is so clear.
“We’re just so lucky that we have the people we have pushing this forward for us on a volunteer basis,” he added, referring to Wired West’s advocates.
Newman said that when he used to own the Southfield Store, he “got this education on the local economy, which is not good because it’s so heavily dependent on second home owners and tourism. Nothing has replaced the mills.”
Students at Southern Berkshire Regional School District have Internet access at school but in order to complete homework assignments and research they also need high-speed access at home.
Newman explained that the cables — which can also carry phone and television — will be wired on utility poles along with the phone and electricity lines. The amount of a town’s bond for the project depends on the miles of roads and number of households in that town. In New Marlborough, for example, which has “lots of road miles,” Newman said, the project will cost a total of $4.7 million, with the state kicking in $1.7 million. “That means our taxpayers have to cover the remaining amount, about $3 million,” with a bond. The property tax increase as a result would be $50 per $100,000 of assessed property valuation. For a home assessed at $300,000, that’s $150 per year.
To become what is called a “fiber town,” residents of un-served towns must also pre-subscribe with a $50 refundable deposit on the first month of service that will cover 40-percent of the town’s premises, and is a commitment to have the service after the project is complete. “This demonstrates that the town has a sufficient number of subscribers for the network to be financially sustainable in that town,” says Wired West’s website.
Towns that are partly served, in which some of the town has cable, also qualify for inclusion in the project, Newman said. And not every household has to have it, though if a town votes to fund the project, households pay for the infrastructure, regardless, through property taxes.
The Town of Egremont is one of the towns that voted overwhelmingly in favor (208 yes; 9 no) of the fiber-optic build-out using AXIA, a company that services the physical network through MBI. Like many of the other towns, Egremont’s warrant article was written in a way that leaves its service options open. According to Egremont’s Wired West delegate Jonathan Taylor, about 40 percent of households, however, have pre-subscribed for Wired West service. Taylor says that while he recommends that the town use Wired West since it will “provide cheap service,” and because the cooperative plans to eventually repay the town’s bond issue, “there was some concern that if Wired West was not successful, then the town would own its own network.”
Taylor says it’s now up to the Egremont Board of Selectman to decide on a service provider, but noted that, through Wired West, “the town is essentially getting [service] for free.” The savings would be “breathtaking in contrast,” to the $100 per month the town pays for its current 10 megabits of service, Taylor added. Wired West would provide 25 megabits at $49 per month.
Egremont Selectboard member and office administrator Mary Brazie said that the reason the town warrant article did not specify Wired West as the service provider was that “there isn’t a working business there yet.” She said she didn’t see why Wired West wouldn’t “get off the ground,” but “this way, we’re open.”
This choice, which Brazie said was made to protect the town, has created a small controversy in Egremont that somehow the town will be swindled by AXIA, and that residents were led to believe they were voting to adopt both the Wired West service and the $2.9 million bond issue for the build-out.
“In fact, the way the article was written on the warrant this could turn into one big bait and switch and we’ll be on the losing end,” wrote Eye on Egremont blogger Kevin Zurrin.
“Essentially AXIA’s plan is to take all of our money to build their company and then charge us for the service,” Durrin asserted.
Monica Webb, chair of Wired West’s Executive Committee, said that all the towns are essentially voting on “the Wired West model.” She added that the cooperative has a 70- page “pro forma, complex financial statement, with a 20-year budget, that includes every possible operational expense that we would need to cover, including insurance, maintenance of lines…all are accounted for and budgeted for.” Webb said that “all operating expenses would be covered,” given Wired West’s revenue projections, which are “very conservative.” After several years of operation, she said, “we’d be able to pay the debt service, after a certain level of profitability.”
The minor dust-up in Egremont may be the first over broadband service, but increasing speed is apparently worth fighting for.
“This is a bedrock necessity,” Newman said, noting that it will help rural communities receive the benefits of technological advances such as telemedicine.
Newman nixed the idea that fiber optic cables might be obsolescent, something espoused by the occasional naysayer. “Absolutely not. The physical fiber optic cable that connects the home to the Internet all over world…is the gold standard.” He added that while cellular technology and mobile devices “are tremendously helpful, you can’t replace this with it. You couldn’t afford to run a business on cell.”
South County hub Great Barrington is a member of Wired West with access to high-speed Internet service. “But it isn’t broadband or fiber,” said Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin. “For most people it’s fine,” she added, “but it would be a huge advantage for the business community,” to run fiber through the heart of town. Tabakin said she wants to work with businesses who want broadband.
The town’s Master Plan says that the town’s “data capacity (bandwidth) can be limited and unreliable. This has made it difficult for the emerging professional and creative sectors, and for emerging business headquarters like Iredale Mineral Cosmetics.”
Great Barrington does have a main line or “hub” for fiber that was installed in the vicinity of Town Hall several years ago as part of the first rollout of state broadband initiative program, Tabakin said.
“Main Street could easily have broadband at the highest speed,” she added, noting that it involves businesses contacting vendors and pricing out cost either individually or collectively. Tabakin said she has researched the issue, and even looked into the possibility of laying down fiber while Main Street was torn up for construction. Vendors, she said, prefer to run the cables above ground, running them from the main line.
“It’s good for business overall even if some businesses don’t need it,” Tabakin said.
“It’s an investment in the future.”
The Master Plan also notes that a broadband network would boost the self-employed. According to census data, the town has a higher percentage of self-employed workers than the rest of Berkshire County, the state, or the country.
Newman’s hope is that a wired Berkshires will attract “lots of young entrepreneurial people and young families who will move in and contribute — this would do positive things for our local economies by increasing the tax base.”
He said it was a “dire” need given regional demographics that show an aging population, combined with the difficulty “getting people to move here” because of connectivity issues.
“Broadband is an essential infrastructure like electricity, water and roads. We have all things to make quality of life here so great, but if you can’t do business, it’s not an option.”
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