Highlights for 2011 include:

- The WiredWest Communications Cooperative Corporation was established in August, and currently has 24 Western Massachusetts member towns that have passed the Municipal Light Plant legislation. Eighteen additional towns are in the process of voting and/or joining. Voting requires each town to conduct votes at two town meetings that must pass with two thirds majorities. So far, most towns have passed it unanimously or close to it.
- Bylaws and policy guidelines for the Cooperative were drafted and adopted.
- Approval of WiredWest Articles of Incorporation by the Massachusetts Secretary of State.
- The following groups within the WiredWest Cooperative were established to complete tasks and provide guidance to the project:
o Executive Committee
o Board of Directors
o Working committees
o Advisory Council
- Development of a working pro-forma. This 30-page document is a set of projected financial statements in a dynamic format that enables easy modification of inputs.
- Development of an FY 2012 operating budget
- Award of a $50,000 grant from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) to be used towards a market study, engineering survey, mapping, and procurement support.
- Award of a $2,500 grant from the Central Berkshire Fund.
- Pledges of $105,000 of matching funds and in-kind services to support the project
- Donations of $9,000 in direct donations and underwriting
- Development of a procurement plan for key vendors and services, as required under Massachusetts 30B, the Uniform Procurement Act.

Our ongoing work is focused on finalizing our business plan and its underlying assumptions, and completing tasks for the MBI grant. We will be issuing our first Request for Information for engineering services before the end of the year and also will have a new brand identity for 2012.

Plans for 2012:
2012 will be another busy year, focused initially on finishing the business plan and procuring partners for our financing team and operation of the network. We expect to have the business plan and engineering survey completed by April 1, 2012, and will keep you posted on key developments, especially progress on financing and buildout plans.

Today, most WiredWest towns have only partial coverage from limited-bandwidth broadband technologies. Forming the WiredWest Cooperative represents our towns taking responsibility for ensuring we have the fundamental infrastructure to support future economic development and quality of life for residents.

Twenty-two Western Massachusetts towns joined the Cooperative, with 18 additional towns in the process of voting and expected to join the Coop over the next year. Founding member towns span four counties, including Berkshire County towns of Egremont, Great Barrington, Monterey, New Marlborough, Otis, Peru, Sandisfield, Washington and West Stockbridge; Franklin County towns of Ashfield, Charlemont, Conway, Heath, New Salem, Rowe, Shutesbury, Warwick and Wendell; Hampshire County towns of Cummington, Middlefield and Plainfield; and the Hampden County town of Chester.  See here for a map of WiredWest towns and their progress.

As part of the official incorporation activities, delegates signed a Cooperative Agreement, elected a leadership team to oversee the project, and approved the Coop’s bylaws. The incorporation took place in Cummington, a town in the geographic center of WiredWest’s territory, and was followed by a celebration attended by town delegates, legislators and regional broadband advocates. Pictures from the event are available here.

Now that the group is officially a legal entity, WiredWest’s focus is completion of a comprehensive business plan, raising financing and planning the network. The group recently received a $50,000 planning grant from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, and is raising additional local funding to assist with start-up requirements.

Today, most WiredWest towns have only partial coverage from limited-bandwidth broadband technologies. WiredWest’s goal is not only to create fair access to broadband for all member town residents, but also to provide very high-quality services on a reliable, state-of-the-art network that will meet the escalating bandwidth requirements of businesses and home owners, and provide enough capacity for many decades.

The proposed WiredWest network will connect to the Massachusetts Broadband Institute’s middle-mile fiber-optic infrastructure to create a robust network from end to end.

Twenty-three Western Massachusetts towns have taken the necessary steps to join the WiredWest co-operative by passing votes in two consecutive town meetings. Seventeen additional towns are in the process of voting and are expected to join the Cooperative over the next year. A map of WiredWest towns and their progress can be viewed on the WiredWest website.

The WiredWest Cooperative is utilizing “Municipal Light Plant” legislation, initially drafted in 1906, when rural towns faced a similar crisis of access to fundamental services from a lack of electricity. In 1996, the provision of telecommunications services was added to the statute, which enables municipalities to build and operate broadband services in the Commonwealth.

The leadership team and working groups are focused on finalizing a business plan, putting financing together and early network planning. The group recently received a $50,000 planning grant from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, and has also raised additional funding from local businesses and individuals to assist with start-up requirements.

The incorporation will take place in Cummington, a town in the geographic center of WiredWest’s territory. Detailed information on the meeting is available here.

Therein lies the challenge. Although the Massachusetts Broadband Institute is building fiber backhaul in our region, and connecting public safety agencies, healthcare providers, town halls, public schools, colleges and libraries, it’s appears there isn’t the level of profitability for a private sector firm to extend that connectivity with a robust, high capacity last-mile fiber-optic network to serve all of our region’s homes and businesses.

Many parents we speak to complain about children going to the library to do homework. What these families want is a good connection at home. Likewise for people operating home businesses or working remotely, who are looking for connections that provide access to the same cutting edge business applications enjoyed by those in urban and suburban areas.

Based on feedback from our region’s residents, including comments on the WiredWest Facebook page, even those whose homes are already connected by DSL or wireless are finding their download speeds becoming slower and slower, as more and more users  stream high-bandwidth applications like TV shows, movies and YouTube videos, and use applications like file sharing and HD teleconferencing. It’s not surprising we’re hearing complaints about these low-bandwidth technologies; in 2010 alone, bandwidth consumption increased 116%, as shown on the graph in this article, showing the escalation in internet bandwidth consumption over the last few years.

It’s critical to solve the last-mile problem with a solution that provides adequate capacity both for today and the future, is affordable, reaches all in a town who want service – and most importantly, truly positions our students, businesses, institutions and citizens to fully participate in the digital world.

At WiredWest, we believe our communities deserve more than a patchwork of yesterday’s technologies. And there is a feasible way of providing our unserved and underserved communities with access to a state-of-the-art fiber-optic network, through aggregating our towns to provide economies of scale, and financing the network on a municipal basis. This type of operation removes the profit margin required by the private sector, and enables low-cost financing that can be repaid over a much longer period. And just as important, this structure vests control over our telecommunications future squarely in the hands of our region and its citizens.

These types of networks are operating successfully all over the country, and WiredWest has had the benefit of their start-up advice. We are working on finalizing our business plan and financing for this significant initiative, with the assistance of a Massachusetts Broadband Institute grant, and will keep you abreast of our milestones. We hope you will join us in supporting this critical initiative for our communities, by our communities.

Please see here for more information on how you can support the WiredWest effort.

We agree Brandon!

According to the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), “grant recipients were selected through an open, rigorous and highly-competitive process.” WiredWest is pleased to have been selected as a recipient, and views this funding as critical to completing a broadband network design and business model that will serve WiredWest communities. Monica Webb, spokesperson for WiredWest, describes the award as “an important contribution towards creating critical, long-lived telecommunications infrastructure in the region.”

WiredWest is a coalition of 47 Charter towns in Western Massachusetts that are unserved or underserved by high-speed internet. As a community organization, WiredWest represents 27,000 households and over 3,000 businesses, and is working to design, build and operate a last-mile, municipal fiber-optic network offering internet, phone and television services to interested residents and businesses.

Under the MBI program, WiredWest was awarded a $50,000 grant, the maximum award amount. The primary tasks WiredWest will fund from the grant include completion of an engineering survey and cost estimates, procurement of vendors and professional services, a market survey, and purchase of mapping information for engineering purposes. In-kind services from regional advocates and organizations will also be utilized to complete these organizational tasks.

Town participation in the WiredWest municipal telecommunications cooperative requires passing two consecutive town votes at separate meetings to establish Municipal Light Plant (MLP) legislation in the town. The MLP legislation was created in the Commonwealth over 100 years ago to enable towns to generate their own electricity. In 1996, the ability for towns to offer telecommunications services was added to the MLP statute. WiredWest charter towns researched various governance options and determined this was the best choice for enabling towns to offer telecommunications services, work together cooperatively and issue municipal debt to capitalize the network.

As of May 16^th, the towns of Ashfield, Colrain, Conway, Cummington, Egremont, Great Barrington, Heath, Leverett, Leyden, Middlefield, Monterey, New Marlborough, New Salem, Rowe, Shutesbury, Warwick, Washington and Worthington have successfully passed their second and final votes. Chester, also part of WiredWest, was an existing MLP town, taking the total WiredWest MLP towns to 19. And the towns of Charlemont, Florida, Otis, Peru, Plainfield, Wendell and West Stockbridge will be addressing their final votes in the coming weeks.

Steve Nelson, former telecommunications industry electronic journalist and Washington delegate for Wired West, made his own observations about the widespread success of the votes, “Every day, towns in Western Massachusetts are falling further behind the rapid changes occurring in telecommunications. People are unhappy now about having poor Internet service, but things are only going to get worse if we don’t take action. By joining together in the WiredWest cooperative to deploy an advanced fiber network, we can assure a bright future for our region.”

In addition, 11 towns – Alford, Becket, Buckland, Chesterfield, Hawley, Mount Washington, Northfield, Plainfield, Sandisfield, Savoy and Shelburne – have recently passed their towns’ first votes, with Goshen, Hinsdale and New Ashford set to address their first votes this coming week.

MLP Vote Progress can be monitored on the here

Town participation in the WiredWest municipal telecommunications cooperative requires passing two consecutive town votes at separate meetings to establish Municipal Light Plant (MLP) legislation in the town. The MLP legislation was created in the Commonwealth over 100 years ago to enable towns to generate their own electricity. In 1996, the ability for towns to offer telecommunications services was added to the MLP statute. WiredWest charter towns researched various governance options and determined this was the best choice for enabling towns to offer telecommunications services, work together cooperatively and issue municipal debt to capitalize the network.

As of May 4th, the towns of Colrain, Conway, Egremont, Great Barrington, Leverett, Leyden, New Marlborough and Warwick have successfully passed their second votes. Chester, also part of WiredWest, was an existing MLP town. Sixteen towns are addressing their final votes over the next few weeks. In addition, five towns – Buckland, Hawley, Mount Washington, Northfield and Shelburne – have recently passed their towns’ first votes, with eight more towns conducting primary votes during this town meeting season. According to Bob O’Haver, WiredWest representative for the town of Great Barrington, “Our citizens realize the critical importance of a fiber-optic network to the future of our business development and education – and their preferences are coming across clearly in the votes to establish the WiredWest Coop.” Great Barrington passed the MLP vote 283 to 11.

MLP Vote Progress can be monitored on the WiredWest website.

It’s a tale not only of the challenges from lack of adequate access – but also of the possibilities that a state-of-the-art fiber-to-the-home network would bring to the region, in terms of business and employment growth, economic development, better healthcare and education, a stable and diverse population, and a better quality of life.

This version of the video has been formatted to make it easier to view using satellite, DSL and wireless connections.

Richard provided a number of examples of how businesses today are making decisions about which communities to invest in based on access to fiber-optic networks, “In Fort Wayne’s 2007 surveys of site selection specialists and people looking to invest in Indiana, access to high-speed broadband was second, third, and always in the top five reasons a company would invest in an area,” he told WiredWest, and also provided examples of regions, cities and towns being passed over for lack of fiber-optic infrastructure.

Richard cited a study by RVA Consultants indicating home-based businesses with a fiber-to-the-home system had $20,000 to $30,000 more in annual revenues coming into the home. “If you aggregate that within a community, you begin to see a very substantial economic multiplier effect,” he said.

The meeting reinforced WiredWest’s research that attracting and retaining businesses, and enabling home-based workers and entrepreneurs to prosper in Western Massachusetts requires sufficient telecommunications infrastructure to participate and thrive in the evolving digital world. Today, the most reliable technology that has the capacity to meet the region’s telecommunications needs for decades to come is fiber-optic. Ensuring Western Massachusetts is planning for this type of infrastructure is an important economic development issue..

WiredWest is proposing a last-mile fiber-optic network that would connect to a regional fiber-optic backhaul such as the Massachusetts Broadband Institute’s middle mile network.

Currently WiredWest is working on creating a governance structure for the member towns, with a target of July 1^st, 2011 of forming a public cooperative. Governance is critical to formalizing the relationship among participating WiredWest towns and creating a vehicle to capitalize and operate the network. To view the progress of towns voting on the proposed WiredWest governance structure, please click here. WiredWest is also finalizing a business plan and conducting preliminary network planning.

Watch video highlights of Richard’s presentation: Graham Richards on fiber

The chosen governance structure for the WiredWest organization is a public cooperative, made up of member towns that have passed Municipal Light Plant legislation. Research on potential forms of governance was conducted by counsel and consultants with the assistance of WiredWest’s Steering Committee and delegates.

Municipal Light Plant (MLP) legislation is listed under Massachusetts General Laws 164, and was created over 100 years ago to enable towns to provide electricity. In 1996, it was amended to allow the provision of telecommunications services. The MLP option is advantageous to WiredWest’s efforts for a number of reasons, particularly the expediency of using existing legislation.

What Municipal Light Plant legislation means for towns

Passing the MLP legislation creates a new town department, and does not require a town to produce or sell electricity. The Selectboard can choose to oversee its MLP department themselves or appoint a three to five member board. This group is responsible for appointing a manager, making decisions around the town’s participation and representation in the WiredWest Cooperative, and filing annually with the State.

Creating the MLP incurs no cost to the town. If a town decides to join the WiredWest Cooperative, there will be a membership fee of not more than $1,000 per town. For a town to become an MLP requires a two-thirds majority pass vote of voters present, at two town meetings, two to 13 months apart. For further information, please refer to WiredWest’s information bulletin on Municipal Light Plant legislation, including the warrant article wording, and our Governance FAQ.

MLP Voting Progress and Schedule

Ten towns, including Ashfield, Charlemont, Egremont, Heath, Leyden, New Salem, Otis, Shutesbury, Wendell and West Stockbridge have successfully passed their first votes at special town meetings. The following towns have upcoming votes: Colrain & Washington, January 24^th; Conway, January 31^st; Warwick Febuary 7^th; and Great Barrington, February 9^th. Several other towns are in the process of confirming dates. These towns plan to hold their second votes at Annual Town Meetings in the Spring. All towns that have established MLPs by June 30, 2011 will be invited as founding members of the WiredWest Communications Cooperative.

Please see the map for the status of your town, and if you have questions, please contact your town delegates.

Work on other aspects of the project, including engineering, business planning and financing, is proceeding over the next several months, to ensure WiredWest is positioned to secure financing and begin construction as soon as enough towns officially join the public Cooperative.

For more information on WiredWest, please visit the website.