Person:

Talbot, David

This report describes a multi-year effort by the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to establish a robust and versatile communications infrastructure to better serve its citizens. The town’s municipal utility, Concord Municipal Light Plant, or CMLP, built a 100-mile fiber optic network as a backbone for a smart grid, and then used the network to deliver high-speed Internet access to homes and businesses, competing with Comcast. With the fiber installed, the town realized significant savings on municipal communications costs and generated new fiber-leasing revenue. CMLP recently launched a strategic planning effort to use the smart grid network and the data it generates to reduce peak power demand and costs, and to reduce systemwide greenhouse gas emissions. CMLP may earn additional revenue by allowing the New England transmission system to use parts of CMLP’s smart grid to balance regional electricity loads. And Concord now has the potential to expand its Internet access business beyond town boundaries, starting in neighboring Acton.

This report describes WiredWest, a cooperative formed by towns in rural western Massachusetts. WiredWest has put forward a detailed proposal to provide “last-mile” high-speed Internet access connections to homes and businesses in a region policymakers have long lamented suffers from poor Internet access. On behalf of its member towns, WiredWest plans to operate and provide services over a state-of-the-art fiber optic network in these chronically underserved communities. WiredWest has taken a regional approach to spread risk and achieve economies of scale. Thirty-one towns passed Select Board resolutions declaring their intent to participate in a cooperative network with WiredWest. Under the plan, they will pay about two-thirds of the network’s costs; so far 24 of them have authorized borrowing a total of $38 million. To cover remaining costs, they will need to receive a portion of $50 million already authorized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to subsidize high-speed Internet access in the region. The state agency responsible for disbursing the funds, the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), recently tabled any decision on the project. The administration of Gov. Charlie Baker subsequently asked MBI to “develop policies to ensure that it is reviewing and analyzing all options” for making lastmile grants. WiredWest’s future hangs in the balance.