To the editor:
In Berkshire County, where hills cradle culture and history, a silent fracture persists: the digital divide. From Lenox to Becket, thousands of residents—students, workers, seniors—languish with internet speeds that mock the 21st century. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reports that in 2023, 25 percent of rural Massachusetts households lacked broadband meeting the minimal 25 Mbps standard. Berkshire County, with its sparse 135 residents per square mile (U.S. Census, 2020), likely fares worse today in 2025. This isn’t just inconvenience; it’s exclusion from an economy, education, and community increasingly lived online. Yet, as partisan rancor stalls progress, a centrist path—pragmatic, equitable, and local—offers hope. Berkshire Edge readers, attuned to both justice and reason, deserve a plan that works.
The stakes are stark. In Lenox, a high schooler bikes to the library for Wi-Fi to finish homework, per local accounts reported by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) in 2024. In Sheffield, a farmer loses crop sales when her website buffers, a plight echoed in USDA rural connectivity studies. Becket seniors miss telehealth visits—vital since COVID-19—due to dropped signals, a trend AARP flagged nationwide in 2023. Pittsfield hums with fiber, but beyond its edges, DSL limps at five to 10 Mbps, per Speedtest.net’s 2024 regional data. This isn’t a “rural sob story”; it is a structural failure hitting real people—our neighbors.
Blame abounds, but finger-pointing fixes nothing. Telecom giants like Comcast, raking in $13.7 billion in profits in 2024 (SEC filings), shun low-density towns where fiber costs soar—up to $27,000 per mile, per the National Rural Broadband Association. State efforts falter too: MBI’s Last Mile program wired 53 towns by 2022, yet Lenox and Adams remain on hold, stalled by a $1.2 billion shortfall, per a 2024 state audit. Federal funds from the 2021 Infrastructure Act—$42 billion for broadband—trickle slowly, with Massachusetts receiving just $147 million by late 2024 (FCC updates). Progressives demand government takeovers; conservatives cry “free market”; neither delivers.
A centrist lens cuts through this noise. Broadband isn’t a luxury; it’s a utility, like electricity in the 1930s. But nor is it a blank check for state overreach or corporate handouts. Berkshire County needs a hybrid fix, blending public grit with private savvy, rooted in local control. Here’s how.
First, form a Berkshire Broadband Cooperative. Towns like Lenox, Adams, and Sheffield pool modest tax hikes—say, 0.5 percent on properties over $750,000, tapping our second-home wealth (median home value: $425,000, per Zillow 2024)—to fund a $10 million seed. This buys into existing fiber networks (e.g., Pittsfield’s) and extends them outward. Cooperatives work: Vermont’s ECFiber, launched in 2008, now serves 31 towns with gigabit speeds, per its 2024 report. Berkshire’s 18,000 underserved households (extrapolated from MBI data) could connect within five years, not decades.
Second, partner pragmatically with telecoms. Offer tax breaks—capped at $5 million county wide, per Massachusetts precedent—to lure Comcast or Charter into rural zones, but tie them to firm deadlines: 50 percent coverage by 2027, or penalties kick in. No blank checks, just incentives with teeth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes such public-private deals boosted rural broadband 15 percent in Tennessee by 2023. We can replicate that, minus the ideology.
Third, empower communities. Subsidize $50 monthly Starlink plans for low-income homes—1,500 county wide, per 2020 Census poverty rates—costing $900,000 annually, offset by state grants. Pair this with “digital barns”: town-run hotspots in libraries or firehouses, wired via co-op lines, free to all. Stockbridge’s library already logs 200 weekly Wi-Fi users (town report, 2024); scale that up.
This isn’t socialism or laissez-faire; t’s balance. Critics will balk: Progressives may decry telecom coziness; conservatives, any tax hike. Yet both sides miss the point: Berkshire County thrives when we all thrive. A wired county keeps young families here, not fleeing to Albany’s suburbs (population down two percent since 2020, per Census). It lifts small businesses—tourism alone added $704 million in 2023 (VisitBerkshires)—and binds us closer, from virtual town halls to streamed Tanglewood encore.
Berkshire Edge readers know outrage alone won’t wire Lenox. Nor will waiting for Boston or Washington. A co-op, smart partnerships, and community hubs can—unflashy, fair, and feasible. Let’s bridge this divide, not widen it with dogma. The Berkshires deserve no less.
Ronald Beaty
West Barnstable
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