Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito paid a visit to the Berkshires this week to talk about one of the region’s top priorities: broadband.
Polito, a Republican, made several stops in Western Massachusetts on Tuesday. WAMC caught up with her in the Egremont town offices.
“Well, we are here in Western Mass doing a number of things including taking assessment of how the broadband projects are going here in the Last Mile communities," said Polito. "I just left Alford, where they showed me the hut that’s lit up for their community to have access to broadband and now in Egremont that’s in a different stage of decision making relative to providing broadband to the residents here.”
Alford and Egremont are among the 44 communities targeted by the Last Mile program, the remaining municipalities in the commonwealth without residential broadband service.
“This is important to do, and it’s why our administration has made this a priority for Western Mass, committing the necessary dollars along with the support from the legislature, to make sure that these Last Mile communities have connection to broadband because it’s a public safety issue, it’s a public health issue, it’s an education issue, and it’s an economic issue when you want and need people to work from home," Polito said. "That’s really not possible in a place like Egremont.”
“There’s a remarkable situation here in this town, in that there are two providers in the town," said Bill Ennen. "So unlike dozens and dozens of other Last Mile towns there’s no second competitor. So citizens are going to actually have choice.”
Ennen is the Last Mile Implementation Liaison for The Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
“I’m solely focused on the Last Mile towns," said Ennen. "So, as the lieutenant governor said in the meeting, there’s 44 Last Mile towns, and my job has been as a liaison to help find solutions for the 44.”
Egremont’s two options are quite different.
“One is Charter Spectrum, which we are currently negotiating with,” said George McGurn.
McGurn is the Vice Chair of Egremont’s Board of Selectmen. He says the town has been working for 15 years to achieve 100 percent broadband access. Charter offers 96 percent coverage of the town based on its contract with the state — leaving 40 homes in Egremont still without access.
“And then we have a private provider, Fiber Connect, that is going to cover between 70 and 80 percent of the town by the end of this construction season — what they call phase two of their project,” said McGurn.
In the meeting, residents expressed skepticism about working with Charter, echoing recent customer protests about the company’s service in other Berkshire communities like Pittsfield.
“The skepticism really is in the different of working with a tiny little company, which Fiber Connect is building out here in Egremont, versus a large company," said Ennen. "And obviously there’s enormous differences between those two companies and what they are capable of doing. But, its- they’re not really apples to apples comparison, their products and services are quite different.”
Charter offers broadband as part of its packages, while Fiber Connect offers solely high-speed internet. The state is providing Charter $1.2 million for the work required to bring broadband to Egremont, but McGurn says the town’s residents might not opt for the bigger company.
“We’re given choice, that’s what democracy’s all about, right?" asked McGurn. " And it’s pretty clear to me that the vast majority of Egremonters are going to choose Fiber Connect because it gives one gigabyte worth of speed, as opposed 100 megabytes worth of speed. But there are people that like Charter, and they like packages of movies and television programs and they don’t feel comfortable cutting the chord and moving to the internet.”
Ennen says concerns about implementing broadband are the same throughout the Last Mile communities he visits.
“We all know that the make ready work, involving some 40,000 poles in Western Massachusetts, the make ready work is a daunting level of work to prepare these poles for the new service," he said. "So people are worried about the timeliness of it, how expensive it’s going to be.”
Democratic State Senator Adam Hinds was with Polito in Alford and Egremont, and he said he was happy with the progress that they saw in both towns.
“I would hope that by 2019, most towns are either at the finish line or they’re very clear where that light is at the end of the tunnel,” said Hinds.