Broadband Plans Being Discussed for Monterey
MONTEREY - Town leaders agreed to a March 15 deadline for coming back to the state’s Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) with plans for moving forward in a broadband installation plan likely revolving around Berkshires-based startup Fiber Connect. The Berkshire Record Reports the town still hopes to get a $1.2 million state grant towards it getting it a fully-connected network.
Monterey’s select board and broadband committee met on Feb. 16 with MBI’s chair Peter Larkin and deputy director Ed Donnelly to work out a plan specific to the town.
At the meeting’s outset, Monterey Select Board Chairman Steven Weisz said that he had four goals for the town’s broadband network: that it be affordable, sustainable (as in, the business servicing it be around in several years), that it come in a reasonable amount of time and that it be receptive to future technology.
In a January 2018 Berkshire Eagle article, Fiber Connect's founder Adam Chait said,
in Monterey, it's complicated — there's already a homegrown service provider on the ground, using its own capital to string fiber-optic cables through town. So far, Fiber Connect of the Berkshires has wired about 40 percent of Monterey, and about 100 subscribers so far are lit with high-speed service.