Advocates for a public, high-speed municipal network for Northampton Massachusetts
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, …
While our coalition wants the city to create a municipal network, we also see our role as part educational. That’s because some of us work in the IT industry. In this post we look at the pros and cons of fiber to the home (FTTH). Fiber means an optical glass cable. Signals are transmitted using …
Today’s Gazette has a story updating readers on Easthampton’s efforts to create a municipal network. The lede is that voters in Easthampton will vote on whether to create a municipal light plant (MLP) for the city at the November election. A MLP is a relatively easy way for Massachusetts cities and towns to create a …
This doesn’t seem to have made the Daily Hampshire Gazette yet. But according to a Facebook post, some residents of Shutesbury (near Amherst) are now wired to the town’s new municipal network and getting 1 gigabit per second fiber to the home. Congratulations, Shutesbury! With no incumbent cable provider, their previous options were dialup, DSL …
Our coalition has been looking at funding models for a Northampton municipal network. The Ammon, Idaho funding model One intriguing idea is being used in Ammon, Idaho. Its municipal network has its monthly fee broken down into three costs: Maintenance and operations. This is the cost to maintain the network. This is currently $16.50 per …
Our coalition met Tuesday night to figure out where to go from here. It’s flattering to be invited by Mayor Narkewicz to help draft the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the city for a formal survey of the Northampton community. Since we met with the mayor in July, we have provided Antonio Pagan, the City’s …
One of us, Mark Hamill, owns a small business in Florence selling his internet services to clients over the web. Today he encountered an instance where Comcast’s slow upload speeds really slowed him down. Mark pays for Comcast’s “up to” 250 megabits per seconds (mbps) download internet service. The upload speed is much slower than …