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Date: 9/26/2023
NORTHAMPTON — A two-year Broadband Feasibility Study conducted by Design Nine illustrates an overwhelming interest in municipal broadband throughout Northampton, and now the city will consider paths to achieve that type of access.
Andrew Cohill, the founder Design Nine, said during a public meeting at City Council chambers on Sept. 20 that the broadband planning company has been working with Northampton since 2020 to conduct comprehensive studies with Northampton residents and businesses to gauge people’s interest in faster and more reliable internet access.
Cohill said that he has seen a lot of reports suggesting that as many as a third of all workers are continuing to work from home since the coronavirus pandemic, therefore underscoring the need for greater internet bandwidth and more affordable options.
The support for broadband in Northampton has so far been overwhelming.
During the November 2021 election, 91.3% of Northampton voters voted in favor of exploring a municipal light plant, while the Northampton City Council endorsed the formation of a municipal light plant, which would allow the legal framework needed to create a municipal network.
In spring 2021, Design Nine facilitated a survey for businesses and residents as part of their two-year study.
According to the survey, about 67% of those who responded said that the availability of broadband internet was influencing their decision about where to live. This, according to the study, is the highest mark Design Nine has seen in over eight years of conducting the surveys. Typically, that number is at 35%.
“[COVID-19] really emphasized in many ways the importance of broadband,” Cohill said. “Internet is not just a luxury anymore.”
Eighty-seven percent of resident survey respondents said they were interested in faster and more reliable internet service, while 82% said they would be “somewhat” or “very” likely to switch to a faster, city-developed network.
Business survey respondents also expressed a need for more reliable services. According to the survey, 86% of business respondents want better internet access, 92% said they would be “somewhat” or “very likely” to switch to a faster, city-developed network, and 94% said that internet is important to the success of their business over the next five years.
According to the study, there were 2,993 residents who responded to the survey, but not every resident answered every question. The survey was available to businesses and residents in 2021 through online and print.
Resident comments
During the Sept. 20 meeting, Northampton resident Al Simon said that he is excited about the possibility of having broadband because he sees it as a creation of a public utility. He, as well as a few other residents, expressed dissatisfaction with the price gauging caused by some private sectors.
“This is an opportunity to reduce costs for homeowners in this city,” Simon said. “If we acknowledge this is a public utility, then the city must operate it in a way that guarantees that what is provided is less than what the private sector would provide us.”
Heather Craig, a resident of Meadowbrook Apartments on Bridge Road in Florence, said that 12 different people in her building use the same Wi-Fi, and they take turns paying for the service every 12 months.
She said they do this because it is impossible to individually pay the monthly cost Xfinity charges since most people in the building have lower incomes.
On top of that, Craig said that Wi-Fi itself is not reliable since all of their Xfinity wiring is old wiring to the building.
“When you ask Comcast or Xfinity, would they even be willing to wire us up, the answer is, ‘no, we would not touch that wetland with a 10-foot pole,’” Craig said. “I know that myself and my neighbors will not have access to internet reliably unless we get a solution, and [broadband] would be the best solution because the city we live in controls it.”
A couple of residents, like Simon, expressed some trepidations with the city partnering with private sectors on this, but Sciarra said that the city will not embark on this project unless it prioritizes equitability.
“We would never go forward unless we were providing a better, less expensive service to the people in Northampton,” Sciarra said.
Options and costs
The study recommends that the city institute the “lit fiber option,” which would create a competitive marketplace for internet services. Under this model, which has been adopted by other municipalities in the U.S., a modern Gigabit fiber network would be owned by the city and managed on an open-access basis. This means the city would not be the internet service provider, but rather an owner and facilitator of basic broadband infrastructure to private internet service providers.
Residents and businesses would still purchase internet from private service providers, but there would be a benefit of greater internet access and more competition, thereby hopefully lowering internet prices.
“The one thing that is changing in terms of internet is the amount of services available,” Cohill said during the public meeting. “We think that’s best left to the private sector.”
The study encourages Northampton to set one-, two-, and three-year project funding goals, which will provide guidance on which grants to apply for and which projects and areas should be included in each grant application.
Design Nine also identified five different neighborhoods and business districts in Northampton to help utilize a cost estimate analysis for the city. The study estimates that citywide fiber in the five identified Northampton areas would cost $5 million. Out of those five areas identified, it is estimated that fiber in the downtown Northampton business area would cost the most-around $2.3 million.
While Cohill said the city will truly not know what the project will cost until they bid it out, Design Nine estimated that the project could cost $26 million.
That leaves the city has a few different options for project funding, but according to Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, Northampton has already faced some limitations when it comes to acquiring funding from the state and federal level.
Typically, broadband funding from those levels is for rural infrastructure and places that lack connectivity, which are attributes that do not apply to Northampton.
“There is a lot of talk about a lot of money that’s out there, and at every turn and announcement, we’ve asked our federal and state legislatures how we qualify, what we can do; what our access to these funds would be,” Sciarra said. “And at every turn, we’ve been told that Northampton would not qualify for any of these funds.”
Borrowing for the project is another funding option, but Sciarra said that this particular borrowing would likely be taxable due to a partnership with a third-party operator. Due to current interest rates, this would raise Northampton’s borrowing costs.
“Massachusetts, unlike some other states, can’t use revenue bonds tied directly to a project’s income, so we would have to do a general obligation bond and that would put the General Fund budget on the hook if the broadband venture were to not meet its revenue goals,” Sciarra said.
Sciarra added that the city’s current financial capacity could not cover the current 20-year borrowing term needed to kickstart the initiative, meaning the city would have to petition for a longer term.
The city is currently in the analysis phase of this project. Any direction they choose to go in as far as funding goes will need to go in front of the City Council.