Local news

Hilltown broadband build passes the halfway mark

Fiber reached 1,900 of 3,500 homes across seven towns. The last stretch is the expensive one.

By Dana Whitcomb · July 24, 2026

The seven-town hilltown fiber project passed 1,900 connected homes this month, a little over half of the 3,500 it was built to reach, three years and two months after the first splice in Worthington.

The Hilltown Fiber Cooperative, which runs the build for Worthington, Chesterfield, Goshen, Cummington, Plainfield, Windsor and Ashfield, reported the number at its quarterly meeting Tuesday night in the Chesterfield town hall. About 40 people came, which is a lot for a July meeting in a room with no air conditioning.

The easy half is done. What is left is the part everyone knew would be expensive: long driveways, ledge, and roads where a mile of fiber passes four houses.

"The first 1,900 cost us about $1,850 a home," said cooperative manager Ivan Prokosch. "The next 1,600 pencil out at $4,400 and change. Same fiber, same crews, different geography. If anybody in this room has a way around that, I will buy them dinner."

Where the money is

The build is funded by a $19.4 million state grant, $8.2 million in town borrowing spread across the seven towns by population, and subscriber connection fees of $300 a home. Of that, $21.1 million is spent. The remaining $6.5 million against a projected $7.1 million cost for the rest of the build leaves a hole of about $600,000, and Prokosch said the real number will land closer to $900,000 once the Windsor ledge work is priced.

Windsor is the problem town. Roughly 40 percent of its remaining route runs over shallow bedrock where the crews cannot plow the conduit in and have to bore. Boring runs $34 a foot against $7 for a plowed run.

The cooperative has applied for a $1.2 million state supplement and expects an answer in October. If it comes through, the build finishes in late 2027. If it does not, the board voted 5-2 Tuesday to finish Ashfield and Goshen first and let Windsor's outer roads slip to 2028.

The two no votes were the Windsor delegates, which surprised nobody.

What it looks like from a kitchen table

Marguerite Teixeira got connected in March at her place on Ireland Street in Chesterfield. Before that she had satellite service that she paid $109 a month for and that fell over in any weather worth mentioning.

"I run the books for three contractors and I do it from the kitchen," Teixeira said. "In February I drove to the Northampton library twice in one week to upload files. Twice, forty minutes each way, because of a snow squall. Now it is $69 a month and I have not thought about it since the truck left."

She said the install took four hours, most of it the drop from the pole at the road down 340 feet of driveway.

Six miles away in Windsor, Hollis Barrand is on the wrong side of the map. His house on Middlefield Road is in the last phase, and under the board's Tuesday vote he is now looking at 2028.

"They have been telling me two more years for four years," Barrand said. "My kid did remote school off a phone hotspot on the porch, which is where the bar was. She graduated. She is gone. The fiber can take its time now."

The take rate is the good news

Of the 1,900 homes passed and connected, the cooperative counts 1,612 paying subscribers, an 85 percent take rate. Prokosch said the projections at the start assumed 68 percent, and the difference is most of why the operating side is running ahead of plan.

The cooperative billed $1.33 million in the last twelve months against $1.09 million in operating costs. That surplus goes back into construction, roughly 55 more homes a year, which Prokosch called helpful and not a solution.

Residential service is $69 a month for 1 gigabit symmetric, $89 for 2 gigabit. The cooperative does not require a contract or charge for equipment, and it has not raised the price since it started selling in 2023. Business service on the town centers runs $180.

Network uptime for the past year was 99.94 percent. The worst outage was 11 hours last November, when a maple came down across Route 143 and took the power and the fiber out on the same poles.

What is under construction now

Crews are working three routes this summer. The Cummington run along Route 9 and the Bryant Road spur should light up in September, about 130 homes. The Goshen build on Cape Street is scheduled for October, 210 homes. Ashfield's Baptist Corner Road section starts after Labor Day and runs into December, 175 homes.

Prokosch said the crews stop plowing conduit when the ground freezes hard, usually the second week of December, and pick up again in late March.

How to find out about your road

The cooperative posts a route map at hilltownfiber.coop with each road marked by phase and an estimated month. Prokosch said the map is updated the first Monday of every month and that people should treat the months as a guess and the phases as reliable.

Anyone whose road is in a lit phase can request a drop by calling 413-555-0142. The $300 connection fee can be paid over ten months at no interest, and the cooperative waives it for households on fuel assistance.

The next quarterly meeting is Tuesday, October 20, at 7 p.m. in Goshen. That is the one where the state supplement answer will either be in hand or it will not.