Gov. Patrick, public officials celebrate broadband access

OTIS – Rural residents will no longer be left in the dark in the Digital Age, thanks to a new initiative to bring broadband to communities across western and central Massachusetts.

Governor Deval L. Patrick, Congressman Richard E. Neal and other state and local officials were on hand Thursday, April 4, to mark the lighting of the first segment of MassBroadband 123. The 1,200-mile network, a project of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, will provide fiber-optic connectivity to 1,200 key facilities in western and central Massachusetts. The first segment runs from Springfield to Sandisfield and includes 51 community institutions.

“Today is a remarkable accomplishment. We are lighting up fiber optic connectivity directly to 1,200 key facilities in more than 120 western and central Massachusetts communities,” Gov. Patrick said in his remarks at the network launch at the Farmington River School in Otis. “In the next couple months, we will light up the rest of the network, providing broadband to thousands more individuals, families and businesses.”

The governor said when he first started running for office eight years ago, he met people in rural communities who had to go the public library just to check their email and connect to the internet using dial-up service.

“You’ve waited a long, long time for this,” he told those gathered in the school gymnasium, including a group of schoolchildren sitting behind him in the bleachers.

“I’ve met kids who sit in the backseat of their mom or dad’s car in the parking lot of the library in the evening to do their homework, because that’s the only broadband spot anywhere for miles,” said Gov. Patrick.

His administration created the Massachusetts Broadband Institute in 2008 and invested $40 million in conduits, fiber optic cables and wireless towers.

The governor also acknowledged the work of Rep. Neal and former Congressman John Olver in helping secure federal stimulus dollars for this initiative.

“For people who don’t think that federal stimulus made a difference and created jobs, I tell you, come here and talk to the people who benefited from this project and from the results of it,” said Gov. Patrick.

Rep. Neal mentioned how he and Rep. Olver not only voted for President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill, but got up and defended it on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“It was a long-term, worthwhile investment,” he said of the federal stimulus package, of which a grant was allocated in 2010 to help fund the MassBroadband 123 network.

State Senator Benjamin Downing praised the “team effort” of his colleagues in public office in bringing broadband to underserved communities.

“We’ve worked together to do big things,” he said.

Following the speaking program, the governor and Farmington River students participated in a Skype demonstration with representatives from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and with students from an elementary school in Bogota, Colombia. The Farmington River students and the Colombian students got the opportunity to ask questions to a NASA engineer working on a telescope project.

The students then got to speak directly to each other, with the kids in Otis asking questions in Spanish to their Colombian counterparts. One student asked what the temperature is in Colombia, while a Colombian student asked what kind of clothing the students here wear in the winter.

“It is becoming a smaller world and these children have a wonderful opportunity because of this,” said Christopher Keller, fifth grade teacher at the Farmington River School.

“I have believed from the beginning that we have to govern for the next generation, not just for the next election cycle or the next news cycle,” said Gov. Patrick in his concluding remarks. “That’s what our broadband initiative is about, and that’s what we’ll continue to fight for to leave our commonwealth better than we found it.”

Posted by Dana Drugmand on April 18, 2013. Filed under Community News,News,State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry