West Springfield residents recently gathered to break ground on a plan to deliver affordable fiber access to all 28,000 city residents. The effort, first conceived in 2021 during the height of the pandemic, involves working with Westfield Gas and Electric's broadband subsidiary Whip City Fiber to deliver symmetrical gigabit fiber.

Whip City only currently offers residential customers one tier of service: symmetrical gigabit fiber for $75 a month. A recent OpenVault report found that the percentage of subscribers on gigabit speed tiers grew 29 percent last year, with one-third of subscribers now provisioned for gigabit speeds. Whip City users can also access phone service for an additional $20 a month.

The first subscribers should be lit up for service by the end of this year, officials say. It’s the culmination of a project that began in 2019 when city officials first considered the construction of a city-owned broadband network; emboldened in 2020 after city leaders and locals alike became frustrated by Comcast’s implementation of technically unnecessary and punitive usage caps.

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In 2021 West Springfield voted to establish a public utility department tasked with creating a town-owned fiber-optic cable network. They urged locals to sign up for a $1.5 million pilot program in four local neighborhoods, and submitted applications to Verizon and Eversource to ensure access to utility poles to begin “make ready” fiber attachment preparations.

New England residents have been complaining about Verizon’s lack of meaningful fiber upgrades for the better part of the last two decades, prompting a steady parade of interest in community owned and operated fiber networks in states like Massachusetts.

But some of these community broadband efforts, such as West Springfield’s plan to deliver affordable fiber access to every city resident, are still being hampered by Verizon.

In 2021 the city (est. pop. 28,000) announced it would be partnering with Westfield Gas and Electric, the publicly owned utility in Westfield, Massachusetts, which has built and operates fiber networks in nearly two dozen communities in the Berkshires. The end result: Westfield Gas and Electric's broadband subsidiary Whip City Fiber plans to deliver West Springfield residents symmetrical gigabit fiber for $75 a month, without long term contracts or onerous hidden fees.

But efforts to launch a $1.8 million pilot project have been on hold thanks to ongoing delays by Verizon and Eversource to prepare local utility poles for fiber attachment, West Springfield Chief Technology Officer Stephanie Straitiff tells local news outlet The Reminder.

We have covered on numerous occasions the fiber-to-the-home boom underway in the rural hill towns of western Massachusetts. Now we are seeing a number of communities around the Boston metro area in the eastern part of the Commonwealth, as well as in other of the more populous towns and cities across Massachusetts, exploring the possibility of building their own community broadband networks.

In the rural environs of the Berkshires the demand for municipal fiber networks was primarily driven by a need for high-speed Internet connectivity in small towns with only outdated DSL or satellite-based Internet service as options. In the larger cities and towns in other parts of the state, by contrast, the driving force for better broadband has been a desire to introduce competition into a market dominated by the regional monopoly providers (Comcast, Verizon and Charter-Spectrum) that have left many communities starving for a cheaper, faster, and more reliable option. 

The towns are at different stages. Some are moving through the study and design phase. Some are stalled. Some have decided to work with third-party providers. And one is on the cusp of building a fiber network, beginning with a pilot project. Here is snapshot of nine different communities and where they stand. (It is not an exahustive list of towns in Massachusetts contemplating municipal networks). 

Agawam

Just three miles south of Springfield is Agawam, a town of approximately 28,000, home to the only Six Flags Amusement Park in New England. What Agawam residents do not find amusing, however, was when Comcast announced plans to introduce monthly data caps and associated fees for customers who exceeded those caps. It was enough to convince town officials they should explore building their own municipal broadband network.