Western Mass. broadband effort advances

The effort to bring broadband Internet access to small communities in western Massachusetts is making progress on two fronts.

In late February, the state-run Massachusetts Broadband Institute reached an agreement with a company that will operate the vast fiber-optic network that will serve as the project’s backbone. Axia NGNetworks USA, a subsidiary of a Canadian company, will be responsible for managing and maintaining the network, which will extend over nearly 1,400 miles in Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties in order to link more than 120 cities and towns.

The network managed by Axia will include connections to town centers and other key locations. It is designed to encourage broadband service providers to deliver “last-mile” service that connects directly to homes and businesses throughout the region.

For-profit companies, however, are often reluctant to provide broadband service in sparsely populated areas, so dozens of area towns, under the umbrella of the nonprofit organization WiredWest, are seeking to create a public cooperative that would provide last-mile service.

Last spring, town meetings in 47 communities in the region gave initial approval to the concept. To achieve its goal, WiredWest is encouraging towns to take advantage of a state law (Ch. 164, Sect. 47C) that was enacted roughly a century ago to encourage the establishment of municipally owned light plants.

According to Monica Webb, WiredWest’s spokesperson and marketing chair, the law was used in the 1950s to create municipal television stations and since the late 1990s to enable cities and towns to provide telecommunications services.

In order to take advantage of the law, Webb said, towns must create a “municipal light department,” regardless of whether the town intends to enter the business of providing electricity. A proposal to create a municipal light department requires two successful Town Meeting votes, each of them with a two-thirds majority, that take place at least two months apart but no longer than 13 months apart, she said.

Twenty-three towns already have achieved the initial two-thirds majority in a town meeting.

WiredWest will be looking for one pilot community in Berkshire County and one in Franklin County to begin working out the details of creating a light department. The nonprofit is aiming to create a public cooperative of light departments by the end of June, which would enable the organization to seek financing for the build-out of last-mile infrastructure.

Webb said the plan over the next two years is to work in “lockstep” with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to build out the network, which is scheduled to be completed by June 2013.

Last summer, the project that Axia will be managing qualified for $45.4 million in federal stimulus money. The state is supplying an additional $26.2 million.