Chicopee Electric Light expanding municipal internet with Crossroads Fiber

Feb. 12, 2020 | Sarah Heinonen
sarah@thereminder.com

CHICOPEE – Looking past a nondescript brick building on Front Street, three large towers sit atop the outbuildings of Chicopee Electric Light (CEL), producing power for Chicopee’s 55,000 residents and their businesses.

“Currently, there are approximately 25,700 electric meters serving residential, commercial and government customers,” said Jim Lisowski, assistant general manager of the utility.

CEL began in operation in 1896 as a source of streetlight power in the newly incorporated city. It is now a city-owned utility and the sole provider of electric power in Chicopee.

“We want to build upon that reputation that we’ve had for the past hundred and twenty years,” Lisowski said.

While providing electricity is “still going to be our bread-and-butter,” said Lisowski, CEL has branched out into providing internet through a fiber–optic network, Crossroads Fiber.

With the explosion of streaming services in the past few years, Lisowski said it made sense to get into the internet provider industry.

“People are looking for an alternative to what they have,” Lisowski said of the reason the company began Crossroads Fiber. Most of Chicopee currently receives internet service from Charter’s Spectrum brand.

A fiber network is state-of-the-art, CEL’s Jeff Cady said with better reliability and higher speeds than the current alternatives.

Here’s how the speeds and prices break down:

Crossroads Fiber offers two speeds, 250 Mbps for $59.95 per month and 1000 Mbps for $69.95 per month. Charter’s Spectrum internet service has three speeds, 100 Mbps for $49.95 per month, 400 Mbps for $69.95 per month and 950 Mbps for $109.99 per month. It is worth mentioning that the Spectrum prices are only locked in for one year, while the Crossroads Fiber’s  prices are not scheduled to increase after a limited time.

Crossroads Fiber also offers “enterprise service” for businesses. While residential service has shared bandwidth, businesses can rely on a dedicated network at a cost that is “significantly less,” than similar service from Charter, Lisowski explained.

Lisowski said fiber has a 35 to 40-year lifespan, while the electronic devices on either end of the connection evolve and change roughly every eight years. Because of that, he said the equipment, which includes a wireless router, is provided as part of the service. The only equipment for which Crossroads charges extra is a range extender, at a rate of $3.99 per month.

Cady said a feasibility study was completed in 2018 with a positive outlook. He said CEL reached out to “a significant number of customers” to see if the demand was there.

“So far, we’ve gotten a very good response,” Cady said.

Lisowski agreed. “I think we’re cautiously optimistic.”

Crossroads Fiber is still in its pilot stage. The network is being built incrementally, with “a measured approach,” Cady said, based on where the highest demand lies.

“We didn’t want to use the ‘Field of Dreams’ model, where, you know, ‘if you build it they will come,’”  Lisowski said, quoting the 1989 Keven Costner film.

Currently, the network has the capability is to serve up to 1,000 customers.

By the end of 2020, Lisowski said, Crossroads Fibers will be installed in an additional 12 to 15 neighborhoods in Chicopee, providing the capacity for an additional 3,500 to 4,000 homes. CEL has a tentative timeline for 100 percent coverage within six to seven years, but Cady noted, “we could speed it up if the demand is there.”

Residents who are interested in the service can visit crossroadsfiber.net to fill out a “show of interest” form.

While the continued rollout of Crossroads Fiber is one of the more dramatic happenings for CEL in 2020, the utility is also continuing work on a citywide meter replacement project that will change out both electric and water meters.

“The new meters allow us to make more educated decisions when it comes to outages,” Cady explained. He said the meters will send signals to CEL when an outage occurs, rather than relying on customers to call in the situation.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 meters have been replaced, so far. Eventually, the new meters will also allow for residents to see an accurate outage map online in far greater detail than is currently available.

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