On Monday, March 29, there was an internet outage for nearly 10 hours affecting six towns and over a thousand customers. It would have been more towns had they finished building their networks. The failure was due to a line down on the MB123 Middle Mile Network built and owned by the state.
The Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) was established as the agency to build and manage the network. The funds allocated by the state legislature by emergency legislation in 2008 were originally intended to bring broadband service to 44 unserved communities, but the MBI accepted a matching funds grant from the federal government and built the MB123 Middle Mile network to 123 communities. It is restricted by the grant to only provide service to Community Anchor Institutions (such as libraries, schools, etc. ). Private companies would have to build out the “last mile” to customers but never did.
The MB123 was advertised as being a robust network built in “rings” of Points of Interconnect (POIs). If a line should break between two POIs, internet traffic is supposed to be automatically re-routed around the line break to avoid causing an outage.
The outage on March 29 demonstrated that the MB123 was not built as advertised and is substandard. The state encouraged and partially funded towns to build last-mile networks using MB123 as their back-haul source in order to finally alleviate the desperate need for broadband in unserved communities. A number of towns have already built and are operating such networks and more are in process.
Thousands of customers depend on the MB123 based on the state’s encouragement. Yet, we are finding out that the MB123 is not what it was purported to be.
So, whole towns are subject to outages from a single tree down on a line. This is unacceptable.
The state should fix this problem immediately. Thousands of customers already depend on this network, and more towns are coming online within the next year or so. It may requires upgrading equipment and rewiring lines, but it is urgent to get this done.
The MBI has been responsible for oversight of the design, construction and operation of the MB123 network. We urge the MBI to take immediate action to upgrade equipment, rewire lines, or whatever is necessary to get the job done and bring the MB123 network up to spec.
David Dvore is a resident of Rowe.