Charlemont worked with Whip City fiber to install a backup circuit in early October that provides a redundant path for traffic in the event of an emergency outage on the MBI 1-2-3 network. On October 16, there was such an outage due to hilltown storm damage that caused some of our neighboring towns to be without service. In Charlemont, the network traffic ‘failed over’ giving this new circuit its first test. Some customers noticed a drop in network speed during this time but the network remained operational throughout the MBI remediation.
Additional investments in the reliability of the network are underway with the ‘Northern Ring’ towns of Charlemont, Heath, Rowe, Colrain, and Leyden. These improvements will be aimed at improving both the resiliency of the network and opening up new opportunities for operational savings.