Stimulus for faster Internet: Federal funding sought to accelerate broadband access

By Larry Parnass
Hampshire Gazette
08/14/2009

What started as a quest to free Hilltowners from their dial-up agony is reaching for bigger problems.

Today, the year-old Massachusetts Broadband Institute, under the aegis of the state agency Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, will apply for $100 million in federal stimulus money. It seeks not only to push high-speed Internet service in the hinterlands, but to significantly upgrade telecommunications capacity across 1,591 square miles in western Massachusetts, including the Valley's core communities.

"Superhighways of bandwidth" would ring the region if the project is funded, says Sharon Gillett, the institute's director.

The institute was established in August 2008 when Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Broadband Act into law.

While getting high-speed service to 20,337 unserved homes and 5,750 unserved businesses remains the institute's main mission, the availability of stimulus funding offers a chance to double down on the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's work and, in Gillett's words, "future-proof" area broadband access.

And in the spirit of recession-busting, the project being pitched to the federal Broadband Initiatives Program says the work in Massachusetts would create over 3,000 jobs.

A decision is due by November, Gillett said in an interview Thursday, as her staff hurried to finish an application that consumed a ream of paper.

"Thanks to the people of western Massachusetts who shared their stories with us," she said. "We tried to get as many as we could into the grant application."

The project

For unserved homes, the project aims to provide the "middle mile" between existing fiber-optic service - such as that being laid along Interstate Route 91 - and the ultimate users. If fully funded at $100 million by the U.S. government, the project would kick in $25 million and set out to bring cable into each unserved or underserved community. Once there, the telecommunications capacity would be sold at cost to private or nonprofit Internet service providers.

They would get the service the "last mile" to homes, businesses, schools and community institutions like police departments, town halls and libraries.

Should the proposal not win U.S. funding, the institute would continue to pursue its goals, but on a smaller scale and with less clarity about how to make high-speed access commercially feasible for the area's most remote households.

Wider goals

Gillett says that along with getting high-speed service to those who lack it, the project spelled out in the grant application would bring improved access to institutions in the region - even if they have high-speed now.

For instance, she hopes to bring expanded bandwidth into Baystate Medical Center in Springfield to allow it to connect with "patient portals" of information that can enable health care customers to log in to networks of information. She notes that many governmental institutions will increasingly need added bandwidth for video-based computer applications.

Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data that can flow through fiber-optic cables.

When she speaks of "future-proof," Gillett means providing capacity in newly laid cable that can meet the increasing needs for bandwidth for up to 30 years ahead, even as communication tools grow more sophisticated.

"The wires are there, but you can keep upping, upping and upping the electronics," she said.

Another round of federal funding will be made available in 2010.

Larry Parnass, the Gazette's editor, can be reached at lparnass@gazettenet.com