Advocates for a public, high-speed municipal network for Northampton Massachusetts
Nearly four hours into a lengthy City Council meeting Thursday night, Mayor David Narkewicz reported a set of preliminary statistics from the broadband survey sent to city residents and voters. 2800 residents returned residential surveys, which is 25% of Northampton households. Design Nine, which conducted the survey for the City, reports typical response rates are …
On tomorrow night’s City Council meeting agenda: a resolution from Mayor Narkewicz for the City to adopt to create a municipal light plant. If created, a municipal light plant would become the vehicle used to create a municipal network for the City. A similar resolution was approved last year. State law requires that the resolution …
Monday a number of local leaders participated in a virtual forum on municipal networks. Two members of the Northampton City Council attended: Bill Dwight (councilor at large) and Gina-Louise Sciarra (councilor at large, council president and mayoral candidate). You can watch the video below: Participants also included representatives from Holyoke, Agawam, West Springfield and Springfield. …
Just in time, one of our coalition founders, Lee Feldscher of Florence, gives a list of reasons why our city needs a municipal network in a Daily Hampshire Gazette OpEd. Read the article here. Today is the deadline for residents and businesses in the city to weigh on the City’s survey. Surveys marked with today’s …
If you missed our interview on WHMP on Saturday it’s available online for streaming. The recording is about 45 minutes long. Many people received their city surveys. Look for it addressed to “resident”. A business reply envelope is included with the survey, as well as a link to the survey. You can take it now …
Mark Hamill and Lee Feldscher, founding members of the Northampton High-speed Community Network Coalition, were interviewed today for WHMP’s PANORAMA show. The show runs on Saturday from 7 AM to 8 AM. They are scheduled to be broadcast this Saturday at this time. Hosts Stephan-Ward Wheten and Dan Torres interviewed Mark and Lee. The discussion …
The City of Northampton formally unveiled two surveys on Wednesday to measure the level of support for municipal broadband. There is a survey for Northampton residents and another survey for Northampton businesses. Participants have until April 23, 2021 to complete the surveys. The residential survey is also available in Spanish. It’s vital that you take …
At the City Council meeting on February 4, 2021, Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz provided an update to the Council on the municipal network study. You can watch the mayor’s update below. Among the mayor’s key points: The mayor announced that Design Nine was selected to do a marketing survey and, if the survey results warrant …
An article in yesterday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette revealed that Design Nine (https://designnine.com/) was selected as the vendor to perform the feasibility study for municipal broadband in Northampton. (The attached article is not currently available on the Gazette’s website, so a scanned copy is shown below.) Members of our coalition served as advisors to the Mayor …
It’s no surprise that Comcast is raising its rates again. But you’d be hard pressed to know it before your new bill arrives. You can see their new rates here. Their new rates are effective December 1, 2020, which means you will probably see bills with the new rates toward the end of December or …