Pipes

Readers in our larger communities may have missed, or just glanced at, the article from yesterday about how much of Western Mass is still without broadband. It's worth a read, though, and it's good to see that a couple of local state legislators, Stephen Kulik and Stan Rosenberg, are on top of efforts to extend broadband throughout the region, and that the Patrick administration is at least aware of the issue. (Kulik, at least, should come as no surprise; as our reporter Dan Crowley noted in the story, he's the only state legislator who doesn't have broadband at home.) Kulik and Rosenberg are convening a forum tomorrow with Sen. John Kerry and a couple of FCC commissioners, among others, that could yield some interesting viewpoints.

Now, does the Gazette have a dog in this hunt? No doubt. It's logical for us to want our readership to be able to access our full capabilities. This is very much a site that's been designed with broadband in mind; we want to be able to do more with sound and video, for instance, and that's just useless to anyone still on dial-up for their Net access. Those folks (and that includes more than a few Gazette employees) have to wait for a large image to download; forget about video. It's the old garden hose-vs.-fire hose problem. At least they're not downloading copyrighted music, I suppose.

But we're just one node on a very large Internet, and this is an issue of class and economics that transcends GazetteNET's efforts to boost and serve our readership. Kids at schools with broadband are getting a better educational break than kids in a dial-up area. (That ripples down into regional school districts, too; my daughter can come home to continue homework research that requires fast access, but her classmates from Leverett can't). Towns with broadband have a much better shot at attracting businesses. Etc. There's a deeper need for equity here on a town-to-town basis that the governor and legislature will need to address sooner or later; given that, "now" seems about right. And the larger towns in the Valley with broadband are only going to benefit if the region in general gets full broadband and becomes a more attractive destination.

We ran a list of towns that have no broadband access, but our brethren at the Valley Advocate also covered this story in a piece this week that notes that when you add in the cities and towns that qualify as "underserved" by broadband, the number jumps to 95 -- all west of I-495. Quite a gap between the eastern and western halves of the state, no? It'll be interesting to see if this forum generates any momentum towards shrinking that.