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With strong support from state, local, and industry leaders, we are making important strides toward achieving Governor Deval Patrick’s vision for bridging the digital divide in Massachusetts.

Governor Patrick signed the landmark Broadband Act in August 2008, which created the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI). The MBI will make strategic and targeted public investments, analogous to government support for rural electrification in the early 20th century, with the objective of serving all unserved communities by August 2011. This will be accomplished by:

• Establishing a Massachusetts Broadband Incentive Fund, capitalized by the issuance of a $40 million, general-obligation broadband bond;
• Seeding public-private partnerships to develop broadband infrastructure; and
• Targeting citizens and businesses in unserved areas currently with no broadband access.

“Expanding broadband services in unserved regions will improve public safety, create new economic opportunity, and enhance education and health care for citizens of the Commonwealth,” said Governor Patrick.

The MBI will invest public funds into essential, long-lived broadband infrastructure assets, such as fiber and wireless towers, thereby lowering the overall cost of deployment for private providers. It will also seek to leverage existing resources and expertise to speed deployment.

The goal is to use public funds as an incentive to attract private partners to make complementary investments and provide complete broadband solutions to customers in unserved areas. The fund will facilitate deployments by private operators, leveraging limited, but strategic, public investment. Partners will be selected via a competitive procurement process that will be open to all firms, including incumbents.

The MBI is led by a nine-person governing board made up of key state policymakers and gubernatorial-appointed experts from a range of experiences and backgrounds that are central to the agency’s success. The MBI has been created within the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which has extensive experience supporting broadband solutions.

The Broadband Act empowers the MBI Board to work with state agencies, municipalities, and private entities to create detailed reports of actual service conditions, location of existing assets, and assessment of needs, all of which will be integral to formulating an efficient and effective operating plan.

As a quasi-public organization, the MBI has the necessary flexibility to make the most efficient use of public investment dollars by creating partnerships with private providers. The MBI will have the ability to work closely with both incumbent providers of telecommunications and broadband services and new market entrants to foster competitive and innovative solutions.

The broadband team is making solid progress on a variety of fronts. Here is just a partial list of steps underway right now:

• Measuring existing broadband access conditions in the Commonwealth
  
• Convening the MBI Board of Directors and conducting extensive outreach to stakeholders
  
• Issuing a “Call for Solutions” to engage private sector leaders and condition the market
  
• Coordinating with multiple agencies and ramping up the activities of the MBI
  
• Advocating aggressively for an infusion of federal funding to support and strengthen broadband deployment activities
  
• Recruiting a highly talented, experienced director for the MBI
  
• Developing alternative network design models to inform cost estimates and the nature of public-private partnership models in western Massachusetts
  
• Creating a central plan to address broadband access deficiencies that will be submitted to the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and the Executive Office for Administration & Finance
  
• Managing the $40 million Broadband Incentive Fund to achieve the maximum benefit to the citizens of the Commonwealth

Learn about the MBI's activities in greater detail here>>