Great Barrington — As western Massachusetts clamors for high-speed Internet to yank its economy out of quicksand, the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) is still “ignoring” a broadband cooperative that says it is working to drive subscription prices down for future customers, according to its spokesperson.
The MBI, however, is moving quickly with the initial process of helping towns organize and finance the infrastructure needed to increase speeds. The towns of Alford and Mt. Washington, for instance, may see higher speeds in a year from now, having organized themselves with the help of the MBI.
WiredWest spokesperson Tim Newman told the Edge that, while the MBI is finally making a push to help rural towns build and pay for the necessary infrastructure such as fiber optic cables, the MBI is also essentially writing WiredWest off despite its potential to eventually get wholesale rates for households and businesses.
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At a jam-packed special town meeting in August at the Alford firehouse, voters, some of whom spilled out into the open air, stand and raise their hands to indicate support for a town-wide fibre-optic network to provide phone service and broadband connectivity. Photo: Heather Bellow.
“The MBI is 100 percent focusing on the getting-it-built part, but not on helping towns create a sustainable network,” Newman said. “WiredWest is about driving the costs of operating the network down so [subscription] fees are in a price range that people can afford.”
Newman added that the MBI appears “comfortable kicking that can down the road. For the smaller towns, facing the prospect of not being able to operate their own network on a stand-alone basis, this is disconcerting.”
The MBI was created eight years ago by the Broadband Act, signed by former Gov. Deval Patrick and the Legislature, and given a $40 million spending account for the “Last Mile,” MBI jargon for wiring up 44 unserved communities mostly in the western part of the state.
The agency’s mission is specifically to extend affordable high-speed Internet to every home and business across the state. But while the MBI oversaw installation of the “Middle Mile,” which creates network hubs in municipal buildings throughout western Massachusetts, those have sat idle; many businesses have had to pay cable companies steep fees for high speeds that can handle large data loads in the modern, Internet-heavy economy.
WiredWest was born, of frustration with the pace and expected high cost for small towns with many road miles, to build an infrastructure and create a network operating system that won’t break town and ratepayers’ banks. More than 30 towns jumped at this opportunity, and said they wanted to work with the co-op.
But MBI never seemed particularly happy with WiredWest’s efforts and, in December, former director Eric Nakajima wrote to the towns and said the agency would pull funding from any town that joined the co-op, saying it was risky for towns not to own their own systems as an asset. But WiredWest took the criticism to heart and changed that so towns would have ownership.
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MBI Board Chairman, western Massachusetts-based Peter Larkin.
And later the Edge learned that, between 2014 and 2016, the MBI spent and requested nearly $1.9 million for a lawyer and consultant who advised the agency to knock the legs out from under WiredWest while towns were still limping along without broadband.
The MBI now requires all towns that want state funding to go through a series of readiness steps. MBI’s Peter Larkin and Bill Ennen, who both work under the Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, are shepherding them through it.
“The towns are at various stages of readiness,” Larkin said. “Some towns are moving forward, some are deliberating, and some thinking of alternatives.”
Larkin said WiredWest’s proposal is “trying to fit a one-size-fits-all solution,” for a variety of towns with different needs.
It is on the “operating side, somewhere down the road,” that WiredWest “might be helpful,” he added. “But in the building out of the networks, we don’t want to be stymied by one size fits all…and we want network operators with experience and financial stability.”
Larkin did not pull any punches in saying that MBI is indeed peeling towns away from WiredWest.
“I’m not sure I would agree that there are still 30-plus towns [in WiredWest],” he said. “We’ve been meeting with each town’s broadband advisory groups and selectboard members. We are dealing with the people who are making decisions.”
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Tim Newman, WiredWest spokesperson and New Marlborough resident.
“Bill Ennen and the technology team have been in every town,” he said, adding that there were a handful of towns that aren’t yet ready.
“It’s a dynamic time,” Larkin said. He mentioned the Charter Communications’ cable extensions to deliver broadband into West Stockbridge, Hinsdale and Lanesborough as an example of the different paths towns can take.
Newman says that, while MBI and towns are making enormous progress together, “with an excellent level of cooperation from [MBI],” the issue of cost to future subscribers is not part of the agency’s readiness process and this is where WiredWest can really help. “If we can consolidate users, they’ll be better able to buy services at a better rate,” he said.
Newman said WiredWest is now pricing this out and will have more information for towns in 60 to 80 days.
Given these cost issues, Newman says many towns understand the sustainability problem. Around 20 un-served towns “are hopeful that WiredWest will prevail.”
And Newman also said that it doesn’t matter who gets broadband to the towns as long as it gets done.
“WiredWest or somebody else needs a viable plan for towns to work together,” he said. “The price that a user would pay as part of a network of potentially 10,000 customers is going to be less than with only 400 to 600 total subscribers.”
State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D-Lenox) agrees that the job needs doing and in a way that is “sustainable.”
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A WiredWest placard in New Marlborough, Mass., prior to a town meeting in which voters approved membership in the WiredWest Cooperative.
“Who cares who does it?” he said. “And [towns] need to craft language that will keep making investments and increasing speeds [as technology changes].”
Under the new MBI leadership of Larkin and Ennen, Pignatelli added, the agency is finally making things happen out here. “Peter Larkin has done more in three months than the MBI has in three years.”
Newman, a filmmaker and designer who lives in New Marlborough and used to own the Southfield Store, says his “personal motivation” is “seeing how messed up the regional and local economy is,” and also seeing that “there needs to be modern internet for everyone.”
He would also like to see Great Barrington, which is partially served by cable, get broadband downtown, something Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin has said she is working on. He says it’s one key to economic stability and growth for it and surrounding towns.
“Great Barrington is our business district,” he said. “For the town to fulfill its potential, everyone in the business district needs fiber.”
With the more rural towns getting their acts together, Pignatelli said larger towns like Great Barrington are wondering if “the hill towns around them will have higher speeds before they do.”
Newman is convinced that the co-op approach can make broadband affordable for all unserved towns.
“We need wholesale rather than retail. It doesn’t have to be WiredWest, but no one else is doing it. If MBI had another plan that worked equally well, that’s fine. But they don’t, and that will put the towns under stress.”