Agawam City Councilor Tom Hendrickson wants the town’s municipal internet task force to reconvene after GoNetSpeed suspended its plans to build a fiber optic internet system in Agawam. He and Mayor Christopher Johnson are hoping that the state’s One Touch Make Ready legislation passes so the process of building a network is dramatically easier.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
AGAWAM — City Councilor Tom Hendrickson is calling for the town’s municipal internet task force to reconvene after GoNetSpeed announced that it was suspending plans to build a fiber optic internet system in Agawam.
After four years of waiting, the private telecommunications company pulled out of the town because of “challenges related to ‘make-ready costs’ that [GoNetSpeed has] not been able to resolve with the pole owners.”
“Whether that comes through the mayor, the council president or some combination of the two, I would like to see that group reconvened,” Hendrickson said of the task force.
The last time the group assembled was early 2021 when former Mayor William Sapelli wanted to study the possibility of either implementing a town-owned and managed internet service or partnering with a third party to establish a new network.
Consisting of seven individuals from different levels of expertise, the task force researched different internet options for Agawam before making recommendations to Sapelli.
The group concluded its work in April 2021 after GoNetSpeed — then known as OTELCO — announced its plans to build a fiber optic network in Agawam.
Delays ensued, however, because GoNetSpeed kept waiting for Verizon and Eversource to finish preparing Agawam’s utility poles for the network they wanted to install. According to Reminder Publishing reporting from 2024, GoNetSpeed specifically needed Verizon and Eversource to finish “make-ready” work, which involves adjusting wires on the poles or outright replacing them to make sure there’s space for new ones.
At the time, GoNetSpeed expressed frustration with the process.
“We understand the frustration about the slow process,” said Jamie Hoare, GoNetSpeed’s chief legal counsel. “We share that frustration and we are trying to both get our Agawam network built as quickly as possible, as well as to improve the system in Massachusetts in general.”
With GoNetSpeed now out of the picture, Hendrickson wants to either reconvene the same task force from 2021 or form a new one in order “to look into what steps the town should take, whether that is creating our own municipal fiber network, whether it’s contracting with Westfield to expand Whip City Fiber into Agawam, [or] whether it’s finding another company.”
Any movement on a fiber optic system in Agawam would likely hinge on decisions made by the commonwealth. Both Hendrickson and Mayor Christopher Johnson are proponents of the “One Touch Make Ready” legislation currently idling at the state level, which would require utility pole owners to allow a single construction crew to make changes to multiple utility wires.
Proponents of the bill, which was last seen in the House Ways and Means Committee last year, say the legislation would dramatically ease the process of building fiber optic networks in Massachusetts. Evidently, Agawam would likely avoid a situation like the one they experienced with GoNetSpeed if the bill passed.
Although 26 other states have approved similar legislation, the state’s own OTMR bill has had no movement since last April.
According to the state’s website, “no further action” was taken as of Dec. 31.
“The simple fact is that Massachusetts is the only New England state to not adopt the one touch make ready process for the procurement of pole licenses,” Johnson said in a statement to Reminder Publishing. “Legislation has been filed a number of times in the Massachusetts Legislature to make this a reality, and it has never seen the light of day.”
The Agawam City Council endorsed the legislation in 2023 and state Sen. John Velis (D-Westfield) co-sponsored it during the 2023-24 legislative session. State Reps. Angelo Puppolo Jr. (D-Springfield), Michelle DuBois (D-Brockton) and Bud Williams (D-Springfield); and state Sen. Adam Gomez (D-Springfield) are also co-sponsors of the bill.
If reconvened, Hendrickson believes the task force should advocate “for the passage of One Touch Make Ready legislation at the State House, and [identify] who needs to be pressured and what needs to happen for that legislation to go through.”
Although Johnson did not explicitly state that a task force would reenter the fold in Agawam, he said the town will continue to review all options. But in the meantime, he wants people to shift their focus to the state legislature and the OTMR bill.
“Unfortunately, without a more streamlined and objective process, I do not believe any company would want to pursue building a fiber optic network,” Johnson said. “We will again review potential options, but the greater focus needs to be on bringing the One Touch Make Ready process to Massachusetts.”
