TLDR: Western Mass is falling further behind thanks to state-funded telecomm monopolies
by Backchannel (these highlights were provided for you by Annotote)
“ Governor Charlie Baker’s apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications capacity.
“ MBI, or the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, charged with allocating $50 million in state bond funds to subsidize high-speed internet access connections to homes and businesses in rural areas of the Commonwealth.
“ last year MBI spent $1 million of those state funds on consultants, lawyers, and administrative costs in order to hand $4 million to Comcast to provide its usual service to about a thousand homes in those nine Massachusetts towns
“ Governor Baker has been very firm in his view that all last-mile internet access connections should be provided by enormous private sector companies with no civic oversight.
“ [a new] $19.6 million RFP from MBI covers service to “40 unserved Towns” — and so will be able to charge whatever they want for bad service.
#monopoly
“ There’s an alternative vision that would allow Western MA communities to control their own destinies: subsidize towns that want to own their own infrastructure.
