Three months after town meeting voters in Longmeadow, Massachusetts rejected an $8.6 million proposal to kickstart the construction of a municipal fiber network, Town Councilors in the neighboring town of East Longmeadow moved in a different direction, voting to take control of its digital future and provide its residents and businesses with next-generation Internet access.

The move was formalized earlier this month when East Longmeadow Town Councilors unanimously approved issuing $43.5 million in bonds to finance the construction of a municipally-owned fiber network. 

The vote paves the way for the western Massachusetts town of about 16,000 to finally get the affordable and reliable town-wide Internet connectivity local leaders see as vital for its economic future and improved quality-of-life.

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With pent up frustration of the high cost and unreliable service under the monopoly of Charter Spectrum, the Council also voted to enter into an agreement with Westfield Gas & Electric to build the network, as the municipally-owned fiber provider has done for nearly two dozen other towns in western Massachusetts — with the utility’s subsidiary, Whip City Fiber, to operate as the Internet service provider.

Construction is expected to start in January of 2027 with the first connections lit up for service later that year in the northwest corner of town where the “initially designated (and most dense) neighborhoods” are located.

Six Years in the Making

The city of Longmeadow, Massachusetts has failed to get a two-thirds voting majority necessary to move forward with its plan to deploy affordable fiber to every city resident.

The vote comes after local telecom monopolies were caught funding an out of town dark money nonprofit to sow doubt about the benefits of the project in the minds of the local electorate.

Longmeadow officials were exploring whether to take out an $8.6 million loan for the initial phase of the $27 million fiber project, paid for by a property tax increase of $97 per year. 

The city is just the latest Western Massachusetts municipality to explore the option after decades of dissatisfaction with regional monopolies Comcast and Verizon.

The $8.6 million would have financed a central fiber hub, an initial pilot area, and a second construction phase expected to connect around 1,600 homes and about 50 businesses and multi-dwelling units (MDUs). The network would have been run by the city as a utility.

Ben Brown, a member of the original Longmeadow Municipal Fiber Task Force, had pushed the network’s potential benefits before the vote.

“With town-owned fiber, you actually get what you pay for,” Brown said. “Speed that doesn’t slow down at peak hours, reliability that doesn’t drop when it rains, pricing that’s transparent, no promotional rates that quietly double after a year, no random fees, no surprises on your bill … the fiber we put in the ground today, is the same fiber that will carry whatever speed comes next.”

Locals in Longmeadow, Massachusetts say they’re being bombarded with misleading mailers, texts, and phone calls from a telecom-industry linked group trying to mislead the public ahead of a key vote on the city’s plan to begin construction of a municipal broadband fiber network.

U.S. telecom monopolies have a long and sordid history of paying proxy organizations to try and undermine popular municipal broadband deployment projects. The goal is always to mislead, confuse, and disorient the public ahead of key municipal votes in order to shield regional telecom monopolies from reform and meaningful competition.

Such groups almost always pretend to be objective third parties trying to protect taxpayers from harm. But in reality they’re an extension of the lobbying efforts of unpopular regional monopolies, who know that publicly opposing these popular networks isn’t a great look.

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These tactics are popping up yet again this month in Longmeadow, where “dark money” group “Mass Priorities” is working overtime to derail the city’s effort to build its own fiber network.

Longmeadow residents are voting today (May 12) on whether to approve an $8.6 million loan to construct the first phase of what will ultimately be a town-wide fiber broadband network.