Norton, Mass, Building Publicly Owned Institutional Network

Evidently, the Comcast-provided I-Net in Norton - a city of nearly 20,000 west of the Cape - suffers frequent outages, outraging those who depend on it. The City has decided to build their own network (after originally hoping Verizon would fund it) to connect town offices, public safety, and school sites with fiber-optic cables. Norton predicts significant savings from the new network - just as do hundreds of other cities that are building their own I-Nets to cut costs and dramatically improve services and reliability. The projected costs are $116,000, according to this article.
Town Manager James Purcell said the main infrastructure that will be installed will be the beginning, and likened the expenditure to paying for the installation of a major sewer line with stubs to various buildings.