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Date: 2/15/2018
CHICOPEE – A lengthy report and study about municipal broadband in the city made the conclusion that such a service would be welcomed by residents and businesses, alike and would be an element to encourage additional business growth.
The question is now whether or not the city would undertake such an endeavor and what would the timeline be like if it did.
The Chicopee Broadband Feasibility Study was prepared by Magellan Advisors for Chicopee Electric Light (CEL). The study goes into detail into the present broadband opportunities in the city for consumers and businesses and what a municipal service would be like if the city invested into expanding its fiber optic network.
The study explained that fiber optics could deliver a faster Internet service handing more information than the copper wire network currently in place through cable television services.
The report read, “However, the majority of Chicopee’s residents and businesses subscribe to broadband services from providers that use a copper-based infrastructure. There is an inherent bandwidth capacity limitation beset by copper-based infrastructure, and the delivery of Internet content is limited in areas where copper infrastructure exists and is shared by multiple subscribers.”
City Councilor Joel McAuliffe would like to see the city explore how to implement a municipal broadband service.
“It’s a home run,” McAuliffe said. Right now consumers and businesses either get their access to the Internet through DSL service through Verizon or through cable TV service offered by Charter.
McAuliffe said the municipal service would offer faster, competitively priced broadband. To have the potential to connect to residences and business, the price tag would be between $30 and 35 million.
“We’ve already built the fiber optic backbone in the city,” McAuliffe noted. He added he believes CEL could do the line work in-house.
Not having an alternative fiber optic broadband service could affect Chicopee in the future. The report noted. “Elsewhere in the CEL service area, fiber infrastructure is not typically installed by any retail provider in advance of revenue opportunities, and puts the City at risk when executing its economic development efforts, specifically in downtown areas, business centers and industrial parks. Without this necessary infrastructure, Chicopee will continue to experience issues when recruiting and retaining people and bandwidth intensive industries to the area. In many cases, businesses looking to locate in these areas of Chicopee would need to spend significant amounts of money to build out the provider’s network infrastructure to then receive costly service … Placing Chicopee’s economic future in the hands of broadband service providers headquartered far away from Chicopee whose corporate goals are to increase shareholder value by focusing on high margin areas of the country can have a negative effect on local recruiting efforts. However, with corporate service providers focused on larger markets, the scenario presents an opportunity for CEL to be proactive and serve more households and businesses in its service territory, becoming an even more trusted source of critical community infrastructure.”
The report noted detailed surveys of consumers and businesses about the potential demand for high speed, high capacity Internet service. According to the report, “From the sampling of Chicopee households, residents appear to have a strong appetite for broadband-enabled technology and a penchant for the devices that connect to broadband. In fact, comparing Chicopee survey results with national averages we see the average number of connected devices per U.S. household is 5.2, while in Chicopee, survey respondents claim an average of 5.6 Internet-connected devices per household. With numbers topping national averages, demand appears to be strong in Chicopee, with such numbers understandably expected to climb as more devices and services come to market. …During interviews with several Chicopee businesses we understand that bandwidth consumption is outpacing the broadband speeds that businesses are able to purchase. Even then, upgrading to new levels of service is often not an option due to the prices that small businesses are able to afford, when considering other technology cost-related factors. Local business leaders have the view that, ‘Anything that gets us more relevant, faster, that’s really what we care about.’”
McAuliffe supports the idea of bonding for the project, which he said would not an affect on CEL customers and could complete the project in a more timely process. There has been discussion to take a more conservative approach that would take the project five to 10 years to complete.
He added the city is spending $16 million on completing necessary repairs on City Hall – about half of what it would take to bring the fiber optic service to homes and businesses.
Attracting more businesses to Chicopee could lead to a decrease of the residential tax rate, McAuliffe.
The councilor added he has been “amazed” at the level of support for this project from Chicopee residents and has been receiving phone calls and emails asking about it.
“We need to prepare out cities for the future,” he said.