Advocates for a public, high-speed municipal network for Northampton Massachusetts
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 …
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, …
Our coalition met Wednesday with Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz and Antonio Pagan, the city’s Chief Information Officer. The Mayor confirmed that he wants the coalition to help draft an RFP (Request for Proposal) that the city will use for the first phase of the study for a municipal network. The first phase will study the …
We met for the first time in a couple of months yesterday. We tried hard to find a public space, but failed. If you have some public space we can use please email us. We’re looking for something like a conference room with an overhead projector that can hold a couple of dozen people, available …
In our last post, we posted that the town of Plainfield, Massachusetts, population under 1000, approved the construction of a municipal network. It should be finished in early 2020. Residents will have 1 gigabit per second fiber to the home for $85/month. There are also business plans, ranging from $100 to $800 per month depending …
Shutesbury, Massachusetts is still stuck in dialup/DSL-land. Comcast long ago decided it wasn’t profitable to wire up the town. But this is changing as the town wires up, thanks in part to the commonwealth’s Wired West initiative. In March 2017, the town voted to create a Municipal Light Plant for the purpose of bringing a …
Both Plainfield and Worthington in the hilltowns have been passed over by the internet age. Internet connectivity required dialup modems over telephone lines … so 1990s and sizzling speeds up to 56 kilobits per second. DSL lines are also an option at 128k kilobits per second to 3 megabits per second, depending on how far …
We missed this editorial in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on March 2nd. The Gazette is all for Northampton and Easthampton’s efforts to create municipal (community) networks. Read the whole thing! It’s nice they called out our coalition and petition network in particular. Thanks to everyone for doing your part, even if it was just signing …