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The Massachusetts House and Senate passed a bill Tuesday that made changes to the way state agencies interact, giving the state a better shot at getting more federal stimulus funds for expanding broadband coverage.
According to Sharon Gillett, director of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, the bill makes it easier for the MBI to take advantage of existing infrastructure and build-outs already under construction.
“It allows us to work collaboratively with other agencies, and that allows us to use things that already exist so we can work more rapidly,” Gillett said.
That ability to speed things up was a big part of going after the federal dollars, Gillett said.
“We have to be able to show that our plans can be substantially completed in two years and totally completed in three,” Gillett said. “In order to do that, there has to be streamlining of the construction.”
The bill makes changes in defining the state’s ownership of fiber it leases, and of any wireless spectrum it might lease for expanding broadband access. Another specific change it makes is it gives MBI access to conduits that are already being laid along I-91 by the Massachusetts Highway Department for its own communications needs.
The Massachusetts Broadband Institute was created last summer to administer a $40 million state capital bond authorization for expansion of broadband throughout Massachusetts — a bill passed months before the federal government made $7.2 billion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for broadband deployment.
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