Hello Friends ~
If you've been wondering why you haven't heard from us yet in 2019 it's because we have been ridiculously busy! There is a lot of activity at OpenCape, and I'm happy to share a bit of what's been going on with you today in this March newsletter.
Honestly, I was getting bored talking about things we would like to do instead of the really exciting things we are doing now. And those are now coming into focus with a lot of forward progress happening every day.
Most of you already know about our efforts to build connectivity to the National Seashore and up to a dozen Outer Cape beaches in an attempt to proactively serve the Public Safety of our region. We prepared a comprehensive proposal on how to address this via our 100% Fiber network and delivered it to the Cape legislative delegation, as well as Town Administrators and Select Board Members. You can read it
here.
We have likewise been diligently working in close cooperation with Cape towns to get funds released from the economic development bill signed by Governor Baker last summer for main street initiatives in Hyannis, Falmouth and Provincetown. We have had good initial meetings with the new Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Mike Kennealy, in which we have made him familiar with OpenCape's objectives. We stressed the role we see ourselves playing in the economic development future of Southeastern MA, the Cape and Islands.
Much of our focus has been continuing to explore the best methodology for offering reliable, redundant, affordable internet service to residents and small businesses. To that end, we have been having conversations with a potential partner to help us explore how we can deliver the best service at the most economical price points. I'm happy to report we’ve made tremendous progress and if things continue to go well, we hope to be announcing residential pilots on the Cape next month.
We continue to onboard new clients including many large and small businesses. I was looking at a list of the largest employers on the Cape a few days ago and was happy to see that we currently service 15 of the top 20. One critical element of our service that I am very happy is expanding is the Regional Wide Area Network (RWAN). OpenCape is expanding the flexibility of the RWAN and actually morphing it beyond a Cape only service. This will allow any municipality in our footprint to utilize the shared bandwidth, Transparent LAN, OpenCape Data Center and additional dedicated circuits to ensure they have the reliability, redundancy and security required.
All of these efforts align with our mission to help our communities compete in areas such as healthcare, banking, public safety, research, business development and entrepreneurship. The future of our region relies on these sectors being robust and interconnected technologically. And right now, we are falling short as a geographical area. OpenCape wants to change that!
Despite the crazy schedule we've been keeping, myself and many of the staff here carved out time to read an important new book by Susan Crawford
Fiber:
The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It
. One of my biggest takeaways from her work is that the lack of connectivity that we experiencing on the Cape is a much bigger issue than simply which provider you choose, (or are able to choose). The larger question is ....Are we preparing our communities to compete, or even survive, in an ever-changing and uncertain technological future? Be assured that the incumbent provider in our area has
no plans to expand fiber on the Cape & Islands, so it will be up to the County and Towns working in collaboration with OpenCape to ensure we find a way to finance and build out these last mile networks.
OpenCape has been working hard to find viable answers to our region's needs ~ and we want you to be part of those solutions with us!
Warmly,
Steve