Advocates for a public, high-speed community network for Northampton Massachusetts
If you have been following us, you know that on February 7, the mayor announced on Facebook and Twitter that he proposes spending $80,000 in FY2020 and FY2021 to study the viability of a community network for Northampton. This will be done by adding the money to the city’s capital improvement plan. FY2020 begins on …
Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz’s proposal adding $80,000 to the city’s capital improvement plan for two years starting July 1 to study a community network is great news. But what does this mean? Is a community network a done deal now? When can construction commence? Naturally, it’s not that simple. The mayor’s proposal is the first …
Florence resident Lee Feldscher discusses the powerful privacy advantages that a community network could bring residents of Northampton. Lee owns Northampton IT, a local information technology business.
Great news! After nearly a year of effort and much coalition building, Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz has added money to the city’s capital improvement plan to study the feasibility of a community network for Northampton. It was announced in a couple of places, including Facebook. The money is requested for fiscal year 2020. We believe …
We met with Alisa Klein last Thursday. Alisa is Northampton’s Ward 7 city counselor. It was a cold day to meet but hot tea and hot chocolate at Bread Euphoria helped warm us up. Alisa was very interested in our initiative and we can count on her as a supporter should the issue come up …
Ryan Cheevers-Brown, a Northampton High School senior, explains why a city-owned community network has major advantages over a private network like Comcast.
Is 5G a good reason for Northampton not to build a community network? In previous posts we started to examine the 5G issue. There is some confusion about what 5G means. To some, 5G has to do with WiFi, specifically the 5Ghz spectrum that you can use on a local wireless network. The WiFi specification …
Matthew Crocker of Crocker Communications is on our email list. Crocker was kind enough to come to some of our early meetings last year. Crocker does a lot of work creating and maintaining community networks in Massachusetts and elsewhere. We asked Matt about whether 5G technology would be an adequate substitute for a community network. …
Northampton High-speed Community Network Coalition founder Mark Hamill of Florence discusses why net neutrality is important. A community network can provide true net neutrality. Comcast has petitioned the FCC to end net neutrality, which it did last year. Comcast is free to give a better quality of service to sites that pay it more money, …
Our coalition met last night and talked about an updated strategy. In general, we feel we are on the right track. We have at least 460 signatures on our petition (311 electronic) — thanks so much to all who have signed! If you haven’t please sign electronically. The link is on our website. We’ve done …