The City of Northampton has recognized the importance of encouraging the development of a reliable, affordable, and secure broadband infrastructure to serve the municipality and students of Northampton; as well as an economic development tool to foster economic growth. On July 2016 the City contracted Percipio Industries, LLC to to examine the opportunity to leverage the municipality’s existing fiber optic network and other infrastructure to bring secure, reliable, affordable, and secure high-speed broadband to the City.
The City’s has an existing investment in a municipally-owned fiber optic network that connects all the public schools, libraries, and municipal buildings in Northampton – a total of twenty-six buildings. Each of the twenty-six buildings that are served over the municipal network have a router installed that enables connectivity on the network. If the City were to expand the network by connecting additional buildings, or through access technologies such as WiFi, the benefit to the community may increase significantly. The intent of this study is largely to address the benefits of enabling more services on the current municipal infrastructure to the locations that are already connected to the network.
Like electricity, water, and efficient roadways, broadband is a critical utility. In fact, while we are able to go “off the grid” for electricity and water, the broadband “grid”, which includes connectivity with the world wide web, cannot be replaced through off-the-grid solutions. You either have access to broadband, which the FCC has now defined as 25 Mbps downloads and 3 Mbps uploads during the peak hours for 95% of your end users, or you do not. (See the February 4, 2015 release on the 2015 Broadband Progress Report at https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2015-broadband-progress-report). This definition is what the FCC considers to be the minimum acceptable speed for consumers and enterprises to connect to the Internet.
View the Final Report (PDF).