The city’s Committee on Community Resources met last Monday. Representatives from Gateway Fiber attended. The company attended to meet members of the City Council and to explain their initiative to wire Northampton with high speed fiber. One thing they noted repeatedly is that their company is assuming all financial liability, so the network will have no effect on the city’s budget.
Our coalition attended as well, mostly to reiterate concerns when we last met with them. The full meeting video is embedded below.
Gateway Fiber said $3M has already been invested. Most of this has been spent to conduct a pole study so they can figure out the best way to wire Northampton. They expect two parts to wiring Northampton. Part 1 will determine 5000 passages, with a passage being an optical fiber close to a potential service area. Part 2 will determine 4000 additional passages. The passages with the most potential or known customers should get an option to be wired sooner.
One of Gateway’s representatives knew about, and suggested the city look into, Mass Broadband Initiative programs that provide grant money for providing service to low income areas like low income city housing. Gateway sounded very interested in using such funding to provide low cost and no cost service to Northampton residents in need. The fact that they knew about it means they are aware of our interest in providing high speed service to all Northampton residents, regardless of ability to pay, and are looking for ways to provide that service, but pointed out that the public building owner would have to put out an RFP. Round #1 of those grants is already closed..
The company highlighted their great customer service reputation, among the best in the business. They strive to be proactive and to offer quick service when there are issues.
Gateway acknowledged all of the concerns that we brought up, both in our first meeting with them, and at this meeting, and seemed genuinely interested in working with the city to find a way to meet each of the needs we identified where possible.
- Service to every business and resident that is interested in having it (regardless of location including rural areas). The company said it is a for profit company and there may be areas that won’t be economical to service. So it could make no assurance that some potential subscribers could be serviced.
- Maintain Subscriber Privacy – no customer information is made available outside of the Gateway Fiber company. The company said they might use data on its customers to see if there is a demand for additional services but does not sell its user database to third parties.
- Strict adherence to Net Neutrality – There is no manipulation of bandwidth to give preference to favorite sites. The company will offer the same quality of service to all customers with the same plan. The minimum plan is 300 megabits per second upload and download, with 600 megabits for $65 per month, 600 megabits for $71/mo, 1 gigabit for $90/mo. and 2 gigs for $150/mo.
- No loss of funding for Northampton Open Media (NOM) that will be due to cord cutting. Currently NOM receives money from cable fees paid to Comcast. The company has a Gateway Gives program so it’s possible some of this money could be sent to NOM, but no commitment was made.
- They will likely create free wifi areas at places in the city, such as public parks
- They will offer an optional IP home phone service for $15/month