Upgrade Cambridge: Rallying for A Better Internet For All
Advocacy has become a fact of life for me over the past couple years. While previously, I was tangentially interested in political issues — often donating a small amount to a campaign — since the 2016 election, that has all changed tremendously. One of the issues that took my interest was municipal broadband.
Two years ago, during the Cambridge City Council race, a candidate knocked on my door. Sam Gebru and I chatted for a few minutes, and when he asked me what I did, I mentioned I worked in tech. He asked me what my thoughts were on the idea of municipal broadband — a city-owned fiber network for all residents. In general, I’d heard of such things from places like “Gig City” in Chattanooga; or of Google Fiber’s deployments in a small number of cities, but I’d never really thought about it much for Cambridge, and said I’d have to look into it a bit more. He asked me to do so, since it was one of his campaign planks.
The next morning, I donated $25 to Sam’s campaign and sent him an email: “Last night I didn’t know how I felt about municipal broadband in Cambridge. Now, I feel VERY ANGRY about municipal broadband in Cambridge.”
Sadly, Sam didn’t win election in last year’s election, but as a result of meeting up with him, I hooked up with the crew who were in the process of founding Upgrade Cambridge. For the past 18 months, we’ve been advocating for Municipal Broadband — initially through polite action, and later through a petition with more than 1300 signatures. Through this process I gave comment at my first City Council Committee hearing; through it, I joined the local neighborhood mailing lists; and more.
With my advocacy for municipal broadband, I’ve learned more stats and figures than you can shake a stick at. I can tell you about 14 different towns in Massachusetts that have municipal broadband networks. I can talk to you about the 95% customer satisfaction rate in Concord, MA; the 157 people connected via gigabit fiber rather than slow satellite internet in Mount Washington, MA, or how the broadband movement in Chicopee, MA was kickstarted into gear by delivery of a citizen petition started by a City Councilor.
Sadly, what I can not tell you is that Cambridge has moved forward on municipal broadband.
The City Manager of Cambridge has decided, without evidence, that municipal broadband is too high of a financial risk; that it will “bankrupt the city”. And he’s stuck to that view despite the evidence of dozens of cities in the region, and hundreds around the country, that have demonstrated otherwise. Cities like Longmont, Colorado, a city of 80,000 where municipal broadband was built, competing against a sole monopoly incumbent. Or Counties like Rio Blanco — where a predicted take rate of 40% has been massively eclipsed, with 80% of the county getting internet from the community provider.
Cambridge, despite having a credible claim to having invented the internet; a strong financial rating; and a community and residential base that has a desire for anything other than the monopoly incumbent, has elected not only to not move forward with building broadband, but to not even study it.
So we decided to show up on the City Hall Lawn.
With more than 1300 signers of our petition, we were going to deliver our petition with a bang — and we did. With nearly 100 different people gathered on the lawn, we made it clear: to let the City Manager bully us into submission based on his gut feeling isn’t something we’re going to let go of easily. We know what we want — an internet that is fast, reliable, and affordable, and we think Cambridge can provide it.
I’m so thankful to everyone who was able to make it out, especially to the steering committee members that helped make it happen; the City Council candidates who took the mic from me over and over so that I wouldn’t just keep babbling (a problem that I have) — but most importantly, the dozens of people who came out at 4:30pm on a Monday to support our movement.
It was a sight to behold. (Even if I did look a little like a crazy person.)
No matter what the City Manager thinks, in Cambridge — a city driven by data, not guesswork; a city with two amazing academic institutions and economic drivers driven by research and data — we shouldn’t make a decision based on gut feel.
If you haven’t yet, join us: Sign our petition to the City Manager, and tell him it’s time to move forward with the Broadband Task Force recommendations of 2016. And if we don’t see movement? Well, the next Council is the one that gets to choose who our next City Manager will be.
And as one of our speakers taught us yesterday in call and response form:
“If we don’t get it?” “Shut it down!”
