Chicopee Electric Light (CEL) has chosen Sertex Broadband Solutions to help the Massachusetts-based municipal utility expand access to affordable fiber across the city of 55,000. The agreement is an extension of a 2019 deal with Sertex to help the utility launch residential broadband services under the Crossroads Fiber brand.
Frustrated by a lack of affordable broadband access, the city tabbed Magellan Advisors in 2015 to conduct a feasibility study into city-provided broadband access.
After a survey showed a majority of city residents would support such an initiative, Chicopee Electric Light launched Crossroads Fiber in the summer of 2019 in a small pilot area.
Since then, the utility has been expanding access steadily to the rest of the city – joining a growing roster of city-owned utilities that are responding to broadband market failure by taking matters into their own hands.
Planners have broken down the city into 144 different fiberhoods, where user interest gleaned from the project website dictates which parts of the city see deployment priority. It’s an approach some communities adopt to finance network construction without having to rely on tax revenues or loans. For Chicopee the estimated cost to build a fiber network that reaches all 55,000 residents is between $30 and $35 million.
Chicopee Electric Light says it’s dedicated to uniform delivery of fiber to the entire city and all 144 fiberhoods, something officials believe will be completed in two and half years.
“What that is allowing us to do is get kind of a quicker return on investment and a revenue stream that we can then use to build the less interested areas,” Chicopee Electric Light General Manager Daniel Faille told local news outlet The Reminder. “Our build isn’t affecting our electric rates. We are using different funding for that, so people aren’t paying for it, none of your tax dollars are being used for it.”
Currently, residents in range of the network have access to two fiber service tiers: a symmetrical 350 megabit per second (Mbps) service for $60 a month; and a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) for $70 a month. The utility’s broadband service comes with no installation fees, usage caps, or long-term contracts.
Under the new, expanded contract, Sertex will continue to facilitate residential fiber construction, with a focus on connecting remaining customers and expanding service to multi-dwelling units (MDUs) such as apartment complexes. The new one-year contract includes options for up to two additional one-year extensions.
“Since beginning work in May 2019, Sertex crews have constructed over 100 service areas, or fiberhoods, in response to customer demand,” the company said in a statement. “Well over 5,000 customers have been connected to high-speed fiber internet to date. Extensive main-line construction completed in 2025 will enable the activation of additional areas and accelerate new service connections.”
Inline image of Chicopee MA Route 116 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Inline of image of Christ’s Community Church in Chicopee MA courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
