By Charlie Deitz
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-910943.mp3
Western Massachusetts – Earlier this year, an application for federal stimulus dollars to expand broadband access to the rural communities in Western Massachusetts was rejected. Friday, lawmakers and advocates are celebrating a successful second round application that will net over 45 million stimulus dollars to bring Western Massachusetts into the 21st century. WAMC's Berkshire Bureau Chief Charlie Deitz has the report.
President Obama set aside over 7 billion stimulus dollars as a down payment on bringing broadband to the whole country. Massachusetts was able to carve out 45.4 million of that, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry compares the current technology in western mass with other locales he's visited "We're way behind,I get better connections in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Senator Kerry says he's been hammering the issue to move the money out of the capitol, a job he says is difficult these days "We've got all the western mass communities,north central Massachusetts, 1 million residents will be affected."
The 45.4 million dollars will be backed up with 26.2 million from the state, making a 71.6 million dollar pot to draw from. So where does the money go? It starts with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, who Kerry lauds for their efforts on this latest grant, MBI's director Judy Dumont says it was hugs and high fives all around the office when they got the news Thursday night "They really wanted to make sure that anchor institutions were connected."
Dumont says the plan is to lay fiber along Interstate 91 which bisects the state up and down, then pull off ramps from the back bone to wire up the anchor institutions. They have 2 years to do 67 percent of the work and three years to finish the job. The last component is getting fiber quality access to all of the homes, that's where Wired West and Monica Webb step in, Webb says the stars are finally aligning "We put articles on 45 town warrants to join the discussion, all 45 passed."
Webb says with that many towns on board, they can demonstrate the critical mass needed to get commercial high speed internet providers to finally want to move on providing their services to the hill towns.
MBI now gets to move into the design phase of the project, so they don't know yet which towns will be wired up first, but their funding is secured. The state of Vermont also received upwards of 47 million dollars for broadband expansion, Governor Jim Douglass is calling the funding the largest public investment in broadband Vermont has ever seen.