Citizens Take Charge: Concord, Massachusetts, Builds a Fiber Network

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Talbot, David, Waide Warner, Susan Crawford, Jacob White. 2017. Citizens Take Charge: Concord, Massachusetts, Builds a Fiber Network. The Municipal Fiber Project, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Publication.Abstract
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.Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:30201055
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