Monday Oct 05 2015 11:30 EDT
Way back in 2005 we profiled the Massachusetts towns of Shutesbury and Leverett, two shining examples of the kinds of U.S. towns that have fallen into broadband connectivity black holes. Large regional providers like Verizon didn’t want to upgrade the markets (Boston still hasn’t been upgraded to FiOS), and could barely be bothered to keep aging copper in the region fully functional.
A decade later and Leverett last Friday formally launchedLeverettNet, a new network that will deliver gigabit speeds to the town’s previously-underserved masses.
LeverettNet is the first ‘Last Mile’ project fed by the MassBroadband 123 fiber-optic ‘middle mile’ network, a project backed by state and federal governments which brought fiber-optic connectivity into the town of 1,876 residents early in 2014.
Voters approved borrowing $3.6 million in 2012 — or roughly $1,900 per resident — to deliver fiber to 800 premises and connect to the MassBroadband 123 network. Leverett contracts a private local ISP by the name of Crocker Communications to provide broadband service, which will cost subscribers $65 a month.
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About Mark Milliman
Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
