Illustration by Laurent HrybykW__elcome to Western Massachusetts:__ gently rolling hills, spreading trees, small and mid-size towns (many of them struggling), and adorable clusters of wood-frame houses pressing right up against the roads. It’s a place with a determined, gritty American sensibility. All very attractive. But the region is at risk of losing its younger generations and having its small towns fade even more fully into the past. Why? Because you can’t be part of the information economy in Western Mass: Tens of thousands of residents are forced to rely on satellite or awful DSL connections. Based on a thorough report out today from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the dismal Internet access story for Western Mass isn’t going to change any time soon. (I am a co-author of the report: you can download it here.) The tale is disheartening. Dozens of small towns in Western Mass have been working for years towards forming a cooperative in an effort to take advantage of economies of scale — and to ensure their homes and businesses have future-proof, 21st century fiber connections. But they’ve been met with indifference at the state level. The towns are willing to put up most of the cost but need the Commonwealth’s help to get the fiber job done. The previous state administrators seemed to be on board with this. Now, the Commonwealth, led by Gov. Charlie Baker (who took office in Jan. 2015), seems to be looking for short-term, non-fiber solutions that don’t involve any form of cooperative municipal ownership.

Result: delay is now the only option on the table. This is a blow for citizens hungry for a service that’s now as vital as electricity.

Today’s report lays out the background for this failure. In 2009, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, boosted by some federal stimulus funding, began building a 1,200-mile “middle-mile” fiber network. That network, called MassBroadband 123 and completed in 2014, was designed to connect libraries, schools, and government buildings to fiber in scores of Western Mass towns.

But for the crucial “last-mile” connectivity to homes and businesses, the towns were on their own. (And the state apparently charged so much for connections that about half the entities that could have linked up to the MassBroadband 123 network chose not to, suggesting that the Commonwealth was treating this basic infrastructure as a profit center. That’s a story for another day.)

In response to the desperate need for last-mile connections, community leaders in Western Mass realized they would have to act on their own. In 2010, they formed a cooperative called WiredWest.

There is nothing spooky or troubling about cooperatives operating telecommunications businesses. They’ve existed for decades — and are particularly common in rural areas — as a form of corporate organization that explicitly operates on behalf of its members. (If you’re curious about modern municipal fiber cooperatives, you’ll love the story of RS Fiber, a cooperative serving a farming region around Gaylord, Minnesota.)

The idea was that by acting as a cooperative, WiredWest towns would be able to buy equipment in bulk — and thus at lower costs — and ensure that the primary incentive of their Internet access provider would be ubiquitous high-quality service rather than cherry-picking customers and charging as much as the richest Massachusetts resident could pay.

The sorry state of access in Western Massachusetts. Blue towns are access-starved. So are yellow towns, which have lined up to join the (now stalled) WiredWest cooperative. The red town, Leverett, managed to lay down a last-mile fiber network on its own.The Western Mass towns involved in WiredWest each passed resolutions supporting participation by way of town-formed “municipal light plants” — public entities permitted by state law to sell telecommunications services. (The name comes from a state statute that gives the towns the power to create utilities to provide electricity — the Internet access of the early 2oth century in terms of a vital utility — and was amended several years ago to add telecommunications to the list of utilities towns can make available.)

WiredWest developed its business plan. A lot of the money to set up the network would come from the towns. So most of the WiredWest towns authorized municipal borrowing to cover two-thirds of the cost of last-mile networks. Volunteers went around getting pre-subscription deposits; more than 7,000 businesses and homeowners signed up.

All the arrows seemed to be pointing in the right direction. The funding from the dozens of towns would cover two-thirds of the costs of building last-mile networks. For the rest, the Commonwealth authorized $50 million to be spent on last-mile networks by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), a state agency set up in 2008 as a pet project of then-Governor Devals Patrick.

MBI held a bunch of joint public meetings with WiredWest during the fall of 2014, saying in their joint presentation, “MBI finds the current WiredWest proposal to be a high-quality solution to address the need for ubiquitous service.” WiredWest continued to revise its plans in response to the concerns of its more than thirty members, but all involved were cautiously optimistic that construction of last-mile networks in Western Mass was just around the corner. Months went by.

Then the wheels fell off the bus.

WiredWest has spent over a year pitching its vision. The state has yet to come up with an alternative.In January 2015, Gov. Baker assumed leadership of the Commonwealth and MBI had a new director, Eric Nakajima (who came on in late 2014). Communications between MBI and WiredWest became fraught: MBI issued statements signaling that single-town networks would be the way to go, and flatly said in December 2015 that “the current draft WiredWest operating agreement is not compatible with the best interests of the Commonwealth, the towns, or their residents.” Consultants hired by MBI said there were flaws in WiredWest’s business model; consultants hired by WiredWest said the model was conservative and appropriate. The key problem for MBI seemed to be the very idea of a “cooperative” itself: MBI asserted to the towns that they would lose control of network infrastructure, while WiredWest pointed out that the cooperative would be “nothing but the towns.” Chaos and confusion reigned. MBI had no other proposals on the table.

In January 2016, the MBI Board Chair, Kate Stebbins, said that the Baker administration was pausing the entire process of last-mile funding in order to review its options.

In February 2016, Nakajima quit. Nothing much has happened since then.

This whole situation is a tragic political mess. The real victims, as always, are the people whose day-to-day lives (and property values) are blighted by the absence of world-class connectivity in their homes and businesses. The Commonwealth’s failure to engage meaningfully with WiredWest means the citizens and small businesses of Western Mass won’t have access to the kinds of services — think new customers, better education, better health outcomes — that are routine in areas that have robust fiber networks.

What’s more, they are stuck in homes that lack the connectivity that is utterly essential in the 21st Century. The value of their most important asset — their houses — is less than it could be. Would you buy a home without modern-day Internet access?

(This tragedy is, of course, echoed on the national level. We’re way behind some Asian and Nordic countries that have moved decisively to ensure all their citizens and businesses have fiber Internet access.)

Monterey, a town in the Western Massachusetts, considers WiredWest at a meeting at local firehouse, May 8, 2015. Photo by Tim Newman.Here’s what the Commonwealth should do — and fast:

• Refuse to fund last-mile solutions that aren’t primarily fiber. Copper is more expensive to maintain, isn’t future-proof, and can’t carry high-capacity communications over long distances. Wireless gets interfered with and itself needs fiber nearby. The state needs to be thinking about long-term value, not a cheap, short-term fix.
• Defer to local self-determination. Dozens of Western Mass towns have said they’re willing to incur debt to get this connectivity built. The Commonwealth should let the credit markets decide whether WiredWest is viable, so long as the WiredWest plan isn’t facially imprudent (the evidence seems to suggest that it isn’t). And the Commonwealth should be working with these towns on their chosen cooperative model rather than dismissing that form of collective action out of hand.
• Consider Huntsville-style wholesale networks, so that no incumbent gets locked-in power. If a last-mile retail provider isn’t immediately available, at least suggest that WiredWest make it possible for anyone to provide last-mile retail services on the same terms a WiredWest-run retail operation gets. Even tiny towns can make this work: think Rockport, Maine and Ammon, Iowa.

Back in 2006, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts led the nation by providing health insurance to nearly all of its residents. Today, the Commonwealth needs to again show the rest of the country the way by engaging with WiredWest to take on the state’s embarrassing fiber deficit.

In my view, municipal open access/wholesale last-mile fiber should be supported by the state because it makes sense as a long-term economic move. And a regional, cooperative structure will help those towns get the most cost-effective network possible. Anything less is short-term thinking — which doesn’t make sense for the most thoughtful state in the union.