How are your allergies this spring? Many people I know have been suffering from the pollen blues—or should I say "yellows" as I have found my white car turns yellow in a matter of hours.
There was also considerable grumbling about Berkshire County being included in the Albany, New York, television market, resulting in very few stations from Springfield or Boston in the channel line-up and, therefore, a dearth of news coverage concerning Massachusetts.
As part of its Last Mile initiative, MBI will provide Charter with a grant of more than $4.4 million to defray the costs of wiring the rural towns of Egremont, Tyringham, Hancock and Peru. State Rep. Pignatelli also noted that Egremont and perhaps Monterey will have a 1 Gbps connection through Fiber Connect, 12 times faster than what Charter offers in Great Barrington.
The towns of Sandisfield, New Marlborough, Monterey and Tolland decided to share the pain by hiring an attorney who helped them navigate a legal pathway that would allow the towns to bid out the construction of a fiber optic network and sign a 15-year contract with a service provider to operate it.
The newly formed Spectrum (previously Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications) will be encrypting its signals and all subscribers will soon be required to have converters in order to watch TV.
The town of Alford recently learned that the Massachusetts Broadband Institute will give it $270,000 and also reimburse it for half the cost of getting its utility poles surveyed.
The Commonwealth grant will also support the extension of broadband and digital television service to an estimated 440 households in Hinsdale, Lanesborough and West Stockbridge that are currently without any broadband or cable television service.
