IT WAS ANNOUNCED WEDNESDAY EVENING THAT AXIA had withdrawn its proposal to build a regional Broadband network to help complete MBI’s “last mile” project, and that the meetings that had been scheduled at Berkshire East and the Town of Becket for the next day — Thursday, October 13 — had been cancelled.
Axia is the Canadian-based company that built MBI’s “middle mile” network — the one that allowed the Hawley Town Office (among many others) to access high-speed Internet. According to Jordan Allred, Axia’s Director of Business Development for Enterprise & Residential Services, the company had received some MBI-generated Towns data from Bob and Cheryl Hansaker of Charlemont, and the company began exploring the possibility of building a network in Western MA that would relieve Towns of the burden of building their own infrastructure. Things looked promising for a while, and it was on that basis that a pricing proposal was put forth as an exhibit for the meetings at Berkshire East and Becket. But then . . .
After some detailed assessment of the current Towns of interest — we’ve determined that there simply isn’t an answer for a comprehensive FTTP network across the Western Mass region from a financial viability standpoint. We certainly are disappointed to have discovered this as we were hoping for a solution and apologize for the late notice — but we didn’t want to waste anyone’s time when we simply don’t have a solution.
As a result, the two meetings were cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice.
