Monday, March 21

Why WiredWest

 
 
 
WHAT IS WIREDWEST
WiredWest is . . .
a municipal cooperative with 45 member towns in the four western-most counties in the Commonwealth. Governed by a Board of Directors made up of representatives for each member town, elected by their town’s Select Boards, it is a regional community-owned network. 


WiredWest is NOT a private for-profit company. It hasn't come to Western Mass from somewhere else. It started nearly six years ago with a group of volunteers from the area. 

Governance

The member towns govern the cooperative through the representatives each town designates as Board Members to WiredWest. I am New Marlborough’s representative to the Board of Directors. My alternate is Gino Furio. As representatives, we are looking out for New Marlborough’s interests. In addition, three of the members of the WiredWest Advisory Council are from New Marlborough. (You can read up on all the details of WiredWest’s governance structure in the Learn More menu tab.

A Cooperative of Municipal Lighting Plant Towns

WiredWest was incorporated in 2011 as a Municipal Lighting Plant Cooperative under Massachusetts General Law 164, Section 47C.
Becoming a WiredWest member town involved New Marlborough undergoing a lengthy process to first become a Municipal Lighting Plant. This necessitated conducting Town Meeting votes – passed by 2/3 majority of registered voters – at two separate Town Meetings within a 13 month period. Then the Select Board voted to join the Cooperative, completed extensive paperwork, and paid a $1,000 membership fee to become part of the Municipal Lighting Plant Cooperative, WiredWest.

WiredWest is An All-Volunteer Organization
The citizens in WiredWest's member towns who have been working to bring fiber service to our homes and businesses are all volunteers. No one is paid for the hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of hours they have each invested over the past four years to move this project toward its goals. The project would not be where it is today were it not for this level of commitment.
Mission

WiredWest’s mission is planning, constructing and operating a regional community-owned, universal, fiber-to-the-home network in its member towns. The planning phase is nearly complete. Construction of the network will begin in early 2016. Service is projected to start in 2018.

How The Coop becomes an ISP as it Moves Forward
WiredWest’s Board of Directors bring experience in project management, finance, law, network technology, finance, marketing, sales and community organizing. This deep-skilled group is the Coop's secret sauce.
As the project moves forward to construction and operation of the network, this group, WiredWest’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee, will be hiring a CEO and other staff from the telecommunications industry to fulfill operational, financial, marketing, customer service and network maintenance roles. Some of these activities may be provided by third party contractors. 

Strength in Numbers
New Marlborough, with its 1020 households, is fairly large for a Western Mass town. Yet, compared to WiredWest, we are small. WiredWest member towns span four counties and represent about 30,000 households. Within the borders of the 31 towns that are eligible to participate in the fiber build are 20,000 households. Click here to see a map of the WiredWest towns.

The scale of the membership gives the Coop a remarkably broad range of real world skills to draw upon to accomplish its mission. 

Some Impressive Stats
Since February, over 7,000 households have pre-subscribed for service, paying in $49 each. 19 of 31 towns have surpassed the 40% pre-subscription sign up goal; 3 more are well above 95% to goal. 24 of the 31 eligible towns have passed their bond authorization votes, authorizing $38 million. 

The WiredWest Business Plan and Financial Model
WiredWest has worked from the outset with complete transparency. The Coop's business plan and financial model have been developed over a period of at least  two years. Both the Financial Model and Business plan have been closely studied and thoroughly vetted by industry experts and a number of operating municipal   fiber networks around the country. The MBI, MBI consultants' have the Financial Model under review since mid 2014. During this time neither the MBI or its paid consultants have challenged the accuracy of the model. The Business Plan was submitted to the MBI and simultaneously made public in June 2015. In the 6 months since then the MBI expressed no concern to that document either. Then, on December 3, the MBI issued a public statement broadly critical of the entire WiredWest plan. Click here to go to the menu heading: "What's MBI's Problem?" to learn WiredWest's response.

 To review the draft Business Plan document and learn about the process WiredWest employed in developing the Financial Model. You’ll find both under the heading: "About the WiredWest Business Plan and Financial Model."


HOW A REGIONAL COOPERATIVE DIFFERS FROM A SINGLE TOWN NETWORK

Small towns in western Massachusetts increasingly are recognizing the need to regionalize the delivery of a variety of existing public services. This concept has compelling favorable arguments when it comes to providing modern telecommunications services. Rather than restricting the design, construction and operation of the network to a single township – a political construct created in the 18th century – better to design-in the many advantages larger scale brings at the project at the outset.
HOW A REGIONAL COOPERATIVE DIFFERS FROM A SINGLE TOWN NETWORK

The Leverett Model
What has taken place in Leverett is a good place to start. They're network is up and running. Has been for 6 months,. WiredWest salutes what Leverett has done
to pioneer a single town fiber network—the first in our state. We in no way fault their decision.  But before you decide following that lead is best for New Marlborough you really need to look closer, dig deeper. What is great for Leverett, say, or Alford, may not work so well for other towns.  It's instructive to look at the demographics. 



Small towns in western Massachusetts increasingly are recognizing the need to regionalize the delivery of a variety of existing public services. This concept has compelling favorable arguments when it comes to providing modern telecommunications services. Rather than restricting the design, construction and operation of the network to a single township – a political construct created in the 18th century – better to design-in the many advantages larger scale brings at the project at the outset.

How scale works as an advantage

Were New Marlborough to operate its own service, the one-town network would have a maximum of 1039 customers (provided 100% of all households and businesses subscribed). The comparable number for the WiredWest network is about 20,000 households. That’s what's meant by scale. More realistically, think in terms of 500-700 customers if NewMarlborough were to go it alone versus 10,000 to 14,000 for WiredWest. Here are some things that the vastly larger customer base allows.
  • Economies of scale for service provision (acquiring bandwidth, TV programming, etc.)
  • More flexibility in pricing and packaging of services over larger customer base
  • Greater ability to introduce new services (e.g., telehealth) over larger customer base
  • Reduction of demographic disparities between towns, such as high second-home ownership
  • Greater negotiating leverage with contractors and suppliers
  • Benefits of financial success returned to towns, not retained by ISP serving a single town
  • Shared risk of financial underperformance and greater resources for responding
  • Shared ability to respond to operating failures and emergencies
  • Economies of scale through regionalized design and construction
  • Greater ability to exercise oversight of network design, construction and spending
  • Economies of scale for operation and maintenance
  • Greater flexibility to provide redundancy in connecting the network to the internet
  • Higher uptime and network resiliency (through interconnected equipment huts)
  • Greater ability to upgrade network as technology evolves and user needs grow
  • Greater ability to attract professional managers (versus town administrator or Select Board)
  • Wider range of input and oversight from diverse members on WiredWest Board of Directors
  • More sale-able asset serving 10,000+ customers (a single-town network may actually be unsellable