Late last month, officials from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) and Community Broadband Networks America (CBN America) —  an independently-owned fiber Internet service provider — gathered with dozens of residents at two Southbridge Housing Authority properties to celebrate the expansion of the state's Residential Retrofit Program. 

The event marked the latest milestone for a program that, more than two years after its launch, has grown from a $22 million pilot project into a $74 million initiative to rewire some of the Commonwealth's oldest affordable housing stock in order to allow residents living there faster and more reliable access to the Internet.

For the roughly 150 residents at the two Southbridge properties — many of them elderly, on fixed incomes, or living with disabilities — the occasion really hit home. 

Diane Servant, board chair of the Southbridge Housing Authority and a resident herself, told the crowd gathered for the celebration what the upgraded wiring will mean for broadband-hungry residents.

“It's going to save you money, and that's always a plus for all of us on very fixed incomes,” Servant said. “Some of the perks are you will be able to do telehealth, talk with your children, talk with your grandchildren. It's just going to be fabulous.”

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CBN America is handling the fiber build-out at the Southbridge properties, part of a broader push by the provider into southern Worcester County. In total, CBN was awarded $5.7 million in grant program funds to upgrade wiring in buildings across six different communities in the region, bringing all-fiber connections to 1,820 units, MBI officials tell ILSR.

State broadband officials in Massachusetts have announced over $45 million in grant awards from the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Gap Networks Program with the lion’s share going to Verizon to “expand high-speed broadband [I]nternet infrastructure to underserved homes, business, and community anchor institutions across the state.”

State broadband officials say the $45.4 million in grant awards will be coupled with $40 million in matching funds from the awardees to expand broadband access to approximately 2,000 locations in 41 Massachusetts communities.

In 2022, as we previously reported here, Massachusetts was allocated a total of $145 million in federal Rescue Plan dollars to fund the Bay State program. With the state’s first round of funding from the Gap Networks Program awarding $45 million to four applicants, about $100 million is left in the pot for future funding rounds. Massachusetts has yet to receive its $147 million share of federal BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law, the spending rules for which are much more stringent than the more flexible CPF funding rules.