Leverett, Mass., is officially launching its LeverettNet FTTH municipal broadband network, delivering 1 Gbps services to rural consumers who were limited to slower speed DSL and satellite services.
The city is holding a ribbon cutting event that includes representatives from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, legislative leaders including Senate President Stanley Rosenberg and State Representative Steve Kulik, and federal government executives.
The event will include an announcement of a state last mile broadband grant to Leverett, funds aimed at closing the digital divide in towns unserved by high-speed Internet.
Already, the service provider is seeing decent interest for service with over 650 of 800 of the town's homes signing up for the service, an 80 percent connection rate, reflecting "strong backing in the town."
LeverettNet is a last mile FTTH project that will connect to the MassBroadband 123 fiber-based middle mile network, a project that brought fiber-based connectivity into the town of 1,876 residents early in 2014.
Providing FTTH services is essential in a rural town where traditional providers like Verizon (NYSE: VZ) have struggled to build a business case to deliver nothing more than DSL -- a service the town only got in 2008. According to various reports, residents said the DSL service is spotty, while the slow bandwidth limited the local police force's ability to conduct daily activities like looking up drivers' licenses records.
For more:
- see the release
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