ROYALSTON — Broadband Committee member Jon Hardie this week sought support from fellow committee members to move ahead with a proposed process for getting the town’s wireless broadband system — in the works for a decade — finally constructed. Hardie has been working with Westfield Gas & Electric, hired to be the Owner’s Project Manager, BLiNQ Systems, who will operate the system, and T3, the project integrator, to establish the steps to be taken as work on the system proceeds, as well as working to ensure the project remains within the town’s $1.4 million budget.
Hardie provided the details during Monday evening’s remote meeting of the committee.
“The integrator and BLiNQ together will do five things,” he said. “They will submit the final site plan, tower height plan, tower location plan, they will do the site engineering, they will do the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) licensing. They will also work closely with us on site acquisition. And we will also be working very closely very early on with the Royalston Planning Board to first approve the tower design.
“We’ll be using the same tower design for five different towers. We will ask for one approval for all five towers, but not for the tower locations.”
The next step, once all of these tasks have been accomplished, is for WG&E to go out to bid for construction of the wireless network. Hardie said WG&E had already received some 20 inquiries from companies interested in taking on the project.
“We will be procuring and installing the towers and all the parts and pieces associated with them,” said Hardie, “including a short South Village fiber hop, including huts at each of the locations, a possible solar power generator at each of the locations. We essentially will be going out to bid to procure and install the vertical assets, which would be the five towers.”
Hardie further explained there would be “additional procurement for tower installation and commissioning, which would be all of the electronics which are on the tower — microwave connections, the antennae, the lightning arrestors — all of it.”
He added there would be a separate bid sought for the network equipment.
“Another way of looking at this whole thing,” he went on, “is that the towers and all the stuff on the towers amount to about 80 percent of our $1.4 million budget. So, 80 percent of the project revolves around procuring, building and provisioning the towers.”
Hardie said it’s currently believed — “but not set in stone” — that each of the approximately 400 anticipated customers would need to pay on average $80 per month to make the system sustainable. Prices will range from $40 to over $100 a month, he said.
“Seniors and part-time residents who don’t use the technology a lot will pay the lowest rates,” he said. “Families with two adult users, four students, and a handful of smart TVs will end up paying more.”
Following his presentation, members of the Broadband Committee Monday endorsed Hardie’s plan for moving forward with the project, pending a review of the proposed contracts with BLiNQ and T3.