A former select board member told the body of three at its January 21st meeting that the town will be receiving the money through the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, or MBI.
“The purpose of it is to try and make sure that everyone, especially those who are impacted by low incomes, were impacted by COVID, socio-economic factors, etc., have the technology, the broadband speed, and the training or literacy to use devices to access and benefit from broadband,” Rene Wood said.
Wood says Sheffield was the first town in the Berkshires to apply for the funding in 2022, selecting the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission or BRPC to serve as its consultant on the grant.
“Later, five other Southern Berkshire communities joined, and the application from BRPC on our behalf to MBI was submitted and finally approved in August of ’23. All right, now, the next event that happened that everybody might remember last June was the BEAD challenge," she continued. "There is an issue that the states – it's not unique to Massachusetts – do not know what household has, what with regard to service, So, they got all the information they could from the vendors, and then we were asked as individual people to sign on to the BEAD website, which I can I'm sure people remember. You went to the Sheffield map, you went to your home, you answered some questions, and you took a speed test. Now, all that information was gathered, given back to MBI, and to date, we have seen none of it.”
The town will receive over $56,000 through the grant program. Wood said one possible use could be training programs for those in Sheffield looking to hone their tech skills.
“As we know, some seniors are extremely literate, and others less so," she said. "So we're also looking at trainings, and that probably may be either a group or one by one, that could be on how to use the device, potentially on particular software programs that people are interested in- If it's a cell phone, how to set up your calendar, how to do this, how to move your phone numbers on, how to sync, all the rest of that. I also see potentially loaning programs for these different devices, somewhat like as the library has now. The senior center might want to get into that. One thing they're stressing is hot spots, potentially over at something like the park. But we looked into that before and found the hot spot is no cost. It's the cost of the annual every month service.”
The select board will have to approve the ultimate plan for the grant money, which must be used by the end of 2026.
The grant isn’t the only digital equity work being done in town.
“Sheffield’s 74 identified unserved locations- Verizon has stepped in and received a grant to wire those locations and serve them by the end of ’26," Wood told the select board. "They have given no date as to when they're going to do that. And also, there was an affordable- I call it the Affordable Computing Act, where people with certain income levels could get broadband for $30 a month. Some of you might remember that. That did not get reauthorized at Congress, at the federal level. So, there are federal bills and Mass bills that are trying to institute something to bring the charges down for certain income people on the cost of broadband.”
Wood says she’s concerned that Sheffield isn’t receiving the internet services it pays for through provider Spectrum, the telecommunications giant that essentially holds a monopoly on Berkshire County’s internet, phone, and television services.
“It was kind of a dawning moment for a couple of us to realize, oh my gosh, our Spectrum offerings are so out of line with what are supposed to be the standard broadband of 120 [mbps]," said Wood. "So, this stuff dawned slowly, but this is not something, as far as I'm concerned, that's going away. So, we, I will be back.”
Spectrum parent Charter Communications tells WAMC that it is gathering information to address local concerns about the service it offers Sheffield.
Wood said it will take work at the state and federal level to assess the situation.
The Sheffield select board voted to accept Wood’s report and authorize her to continue working on digital equity issues in town.
Charter Communications offered WAMC the following statement after this story was broadcast:
"Our network team conducted a thorough review of internet speeds across the town and confirmed that all services are performing optimally. Spectrum’s internet speeds are well within the expected range, and no issues have been detected. Our internet plans in Sheffield start at 500 Mbps and go up to 1 Gbps. If any customers are experiencing service issues, we encourage them to contact us with their specific address so we can investigate further."