Oak Bluffs (Martha's Vineyard) considers wiring itself

The town of Oak Bluffs spends more than $100,000 each year to communicate. With phone lines, data lines, Internet access, alarm lines, police cruisers checking records, it gets expensive. But the town is building a private network that could carry many of those communications without using phone or cable company lines. The goal is to cut communications costs by half, in one or two years.

And, oh, by the way, if you live in Oak Bluffs, you get free Internet service as a bonus. In fact, you may already have it.

"Obviously we want to be friendly to our visitors," said information technology manager Travis Larsen. "We want people to stay, we want people to eat in the restaurants, but a big push for this, is we´re also using it to save on some of our recurring costs." Mr. Larsen estimates that once the town is wired, the upfront costs of equipment, labor, and maintenance for the new network will be offset by the reduced cost of communications in less than five years.

With little fanfare, the town rolled out a pilot program this past summer that broadcast a free Internet signal covering a small area at the foot of Circuit Avenue. The cost to implement the pilot was $5,000. They didn´t tell anyone it was there, but hundreds of people found it on their own, and now use it regularly. If all goes according to plan, the second phase of the project will be activated later this month, at a cost of $20,000. That signal will cover most of the downtown business district, roughly an arc from the waterfront, around Ocean Park, up to the old town library on Pennacook Avenue, and most of the Martha´s Vineyard Camp-Meeting Association grounds. Though the later phases will take considerably more time, the town hopes to eventually provide free Internet service to nearly all of its residents.

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