Advocates for a public, high-speed municipal network for Northampton Massachusetts
As reported in today’s Gazette, yesterday’s City Council meeting was dominated by discussion of the police department’s budget, resulting in a meeting over seven hours long. However, at 2:25 AM the City Council did unanimously approve the creation of a municipal light plant (MLP) for Northampton. An MLP would be a legal framework for creating …
Mayor David Narkewicz has submitted a proposal to the Northampton City Council for its meeting tomorrow, Thursday, June 4, 2020. It requests that the City Council vote on the creation of a Municipal Light Plant for the city. A Municipal Light Plant is a legal framework for a municipality to offer services like a high-speed …
With so many people working from home or just home due to the coronavirus pandemic, Internet service providers have been affected. This New York Times story discusses some of the impact it is having slowing Internet service to the home as network demand skyrockets. It’s affecting people in Northampton too. One on our coalition noticed …
You can read the RFP and bid on it if you want here. Due date for bids is March 12, 2020. Our thanks to the City for including our concerns and keeping us in the loop.
In a meeting on Thursday with the Northampton High-speed Community Network Coalition, the City was gracious enough to allow our coalition to comment on its upcoming Request For Proposal (RFP) to study the viability of a municipal network for the city. The RFP will be a vehicle by which vendors would bid to perform the …
Comcast usually ups its rates on January 1st. This year is no exception but a few rates have gone down and/or offer more speed. It’s likely that some of these changes have existed for a while, and we haven’t noticed. The general strategy seems to be to give a bit more download bandwidth to the …
Happy New Year News! We’ve been notified by the City’s Chief Information Officer that the Fiber Optic project is a priority for the Mayor’s Office in 2020, with timeline planning meetings being after the holidays. Look for an update from us in the second week of January.
Mayor David Narkewicz’s capital plan calls for two studies. The first study would survey the community to determine if enough residents and businesses would subscribe to a municipal network. Money was approved by the City Council in July for this study. After our last post, we did hear from the city’s Chief Information Officer, Antonio …
In July, our coalition was invited by Mayor Narkewicz to help refine a RFP (Request for Proposal) to study the viability of a municipal network for the city. This was shortly after the City Council approved funding for this first study, which is to survey the community. We traded a few emails with Antonio Pagan, …
Our coalition feels that if built, a Northampton municipal network should protect the privacy of those using it. Users should have confidence that the city won’t be tracking what they are doing online. If you use Comcast Xfinity, they are tracking your usage of the Internet. It has a pretty good idea of your interests, …