Page 38 - BusinessWest October 3, 2022

and had developed the business component for that municipal utility’s Whip City Fiber project.
What eventually emerged in South Hadley was a $17.4 million initiative, said Fitzgerald, with roughly $15 million going toward fiber construc- tion, with the other $2.4 million in funding need- ed for advanced meter infrastructure, or AMI. It was financed mostly through a $12 million bond secured through the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. at a favorable 2.7% rate.
“Customers are streaming more; they’re going into Best Buy, they’re buying a TV that is all streaming,. And with the internet of things, with everything from doorbells to vacuum cleaners connected to the internet, people are increasingly concerned about bandwidth and performance.”
As he assembled a team to take this new busi- ness division, named Fibersonic, off the drawing board and make it reality, Fitzgerald borrowed from the successful Whip City model in many respects.
These include everything from ordering materials well in advance — a strategy that has
General Manager Sean Fitzgerald shows off one of utility’s trucks with the new brand, Fiberspring.
brought dividends in these times of supply-chain issues and soaring prices — to the concept of ‘fiberhoods’ — bringing fiber to a community neighborhood by neighborhood.
As he gestured to a map of the town on a large screen in the SHELD conference room, Fitzgerald noted that there are many fiberhoods in South Hadley now, with those currently without fiber to be completed by 2024.
As neighborhoods become fiberhoods, the ‘take rate,’ as it’s called, a statistic that tracks how many households are signing up for the service, is roughly 43%, a good number that grows high- er as more residents add the gig-speed service and word of mouth spreads about its speed and reliability.
And as more and more household
Fiberspring
Continued on page 42
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