By Larry Parnass, Reprinted from The Berkshire Eagle WORTHINGTON — Broadband advocates from Berkshire County and beyond pressed Thursday for the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to free up funding, speed decision-making and support regional solutions to a problem they say impairs civic life. Their sometimes sharply worded remarks took frequent aim at the MBI itself, saying [...]
By JIM LEVULIS, WAMC - Original post on WAMC.org http://cpa.ds.npr.org/wamc/audio/2017/01/wiredwestweb.mp3 Efforts to bring broadband internet to underserved areas of rural, western Massachusetts have been ongoing for more than a decade. Now the regional cooperative WiredWest has a new proposal. It comes after Governor Charlie Baker’s administration shook up and reviewed the efforts of the [...]
by Larry Parnass - The Berkshire Eagle Read full story NORTHAMPTON — Rather than build and run a sprawling regional broadband system, a nonprofit cooperative now seeks to fill a narrower but critical role for towns fighting to obtain fast internet connections. WiredWest leaders made this case Saturday to municipal officials from across Western Massachusetts: [...]
Published as a My Turn article in the Greenfield : The Greenfield Recorder, David Dvore, My Turn/Dvore: Where is the broadband?, January 23, 2017 What happens when you put lawyers and politicians in charge of a project that requires business and technical expertise? MBI, Massachusetts Broadband Institute, was created in 2008 by emergency legislation that allocated [...]
With the start of the new year, we want to thank your supporters and share with you our new plans for moving forward in 2017. As you may know, in late 2015 Governor Baker placed a ‘pause’ on all state Last Mile Broadband projects. In May 2016 the Baker Administration lifted the ‘pause’ and named [...]
MBI was initially funded and created by emergency legistlation in 2008 with a mandate to bring broadband internet service to all 45 unserved communities. Instead, they spent $80M building the MB123 middle mile to 123 communities which they claimed would attract private companies to finish the last mile. It never did and now is a hindrance to [...]
By Steve Nelson (reprinted from Berkshire Eagle, Broadband effort gets back on track, October 12, 2016 ) You will soon see work crews standing around utility poles, gazing upward. They'll not only be checking the cables on those poles, but looking as well toward the future of broadband in western Massachusetts. The long-awaited project to bring high-speed internet [...]
An anonymous admirer of WiredWest nominated us for the 2016 1Berkshire award for Growing/Advancing the Berkshire Economy. We made it to the finals. WiredWest didn't win, but we were one of 5 finalists. Steve Nelson attended the ceremony to receive the award on behalf on WiredWest. An unexpected recognition of our work.
As part of its revised Regional Operational Plan, WiredWest will arrange for all services, such as Network operations, Customer Service, Billing, Technical Support, Line Maintenance, etc. on behalf of member towns. Consolidating these services regionally reduces the burden for the towns and lowers costs to customers as described in WiredWest's comprehensive analysis on the benefits of regionalization. WiredWest has released a Request [...]
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University is a public policy institute whose mission is to explore and understand cyberspace. Read the Center’s just-released long-researched case study on WiredWest. WiredWest: a Cooperative of Municipalities Forms to Build a Fiber Optic Network. Western Massachusetts Towns Create a New Model for Last-Mile Connectivity, but a [...]
