FalmouthNet

02/22/2024

Today there was a nationwide cell outage, making internet service that much more critical for urgent communications. If you’re still getting the SOS only service, move to internet calling.

Falmouth Needs Fiber.

02/14/2024

Notes from the broadband forum, with speaker Gigi Sohn:

👉🏻 Covid 19 pandemic was turning point for community broadband. We all realized true high-speed, reliable internet is not a luxury. Today there are 650 community broadband networks in the US. Yup, that’s six hundred fifty. Why?

👉🏻 Private sector left us behind because their goal is to make THE MOST money possible. (Imagine if electricity was 100% private owned and deregulated) They don’t want to build out fiber because they don’t need to. What does fiber-technology (best in class broadband) bring?

👉🏻 SMART technologies & SMART cities: e-commerce, online learning, online health, scientific jobs, newer/younger residents, tourists. But ALSO - manage traffic, power grid, air and water quality, improve public safety - even monitor those forgotten trash pickups. But there’s one more benefit to smaht cities….

👉🏻 “Smaht” cities (our nickname for us MASSholes) saves $$$$$. So beware of cable funded dark money disinformation. Examples of failed systems are typically 20 years old. Now demand for broadband is sky high. And there’s another reason the biz model has changed…

👉🏻 Even private broadband providers, get $$billions$$ in federal money. Nevertheless they would prefer to spend more in lobbyists to get government money than in improving networks and lowering prices.

01/26/2024

📣 If you’re wondering how a municipal owned (but NOT municipal managed)
Internet service would work - have we got the answers for you!!!

Falmouth is getting a visit from the executive director of American Association of Broadband, Gigi Sohn. She’s the real deal and can answer all your questions.

Here’s the deets:

📌 Date is Tuesday, February 13, 7 pm.
📌 Place is Falmouth Historical Society, 55 Palmer Ave
📌 Cost is $0 (not often you hear “internet” and “$0” in the same post)
📌 What is Sohn’s super power? She wants to democratize technology. That means better rates and access for all Americans. ‼️

Be there or be 🟥

01/01/2024

Happy New Year, Falmouth friends! 🍾🎉

We’ve got BIG resolutions this year. 🤞

12/29/2023

“For everyone to thrive today, we need all hands on deck.”

Way to go, Randolph, MA!

Randolph recognized for first time

12/25/2023

Merry Christmas, Falmouth peeps! 🎄

12/15/2023

"Massachusetts has one of the highest levels of broadband availability in the nation...But rural towns have lower levels of broadband availability than other regions of the state, particularly in the northern reaches of the Berkshires, Connecticut River Valley and the eastern Cape Cod and Islands regions. High internet subscription costs are the largest barrier that prevents Massachusetts residents from having broadband at home." - Massachusetts Broadband Institute State Digital Equity Plan.

Preach!

Massachusetts Broadband Institute shares draft State Digital Equity Plan for public comment

12/12/2023

Internet service competition benefits consumers - better pricing and best in class tech, which is fiber.

This article lays out which internet companies are doing what on Cape Cod.

FalmouthNet is a non-profit of local volunteers, who are tired of gouging prices and unreliable service. “Can you hear me now? Am I still frozen? Everyone get off the internet, I have an exam!”

Even the specter of limited “last mile” fiber service provides a glimpse of what competition can do in a market long characterized by a lack of choice. Recently, the town of Falmouth became the target of a dark money campaign that aims to undermine the town's effort to build either a municipal f...

12/10/2023

Seems like our efforts to bring internet competition to Falmouth, to lower rates and improve service and infrastructure - well, it’s ruffled some feathers. How do you keep a monopoly? Hire dark money to mislead.

12/07/2023

More grants coming down to close the digital divide. $20 million this go-round.

Press Release Westborough, Mass. – Today, the administration of Gov. Maura Healey and the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) at MassTech announced $20 million in new grants through the state’s Digital Equity Partnerships Program, which supports high-impact and scalable initiatives that reac...

12/01/2023

"In addition to the inadequacy of the FCC's maps and the expense towns may incur conducting the speed tests, the letter stated that infrastructure across Cape Cod is antiquated and grossly inadequate." - Bourne Enterprise.

Yup.

Town officials in Bourne have raised concerns with aspects of a study designed to determine adequacy of local internet service. Based on information gathered by the town’s new advisory committee,