Mission Statement:
The Town of Falmouth (the town) has an elected Municipal Light Plant Board formally known as the Falmouth Broadband Municipal Light Board (MLB). The purpose of such a board would normally be to create and operate a municipal Fiber-optic To-The-Premises (FTTP) broadband Internet network that is available to all town residences, businesses, and organizations.
Due to the interest of multiple commercial ISPs to build and provide FTTP services in Falmouth and the town’s financial direction for this project, the MLB has set aside the concept of a municipal fiber network. In doing so, key goals of the MLB are:
- to ensure FTTP broadband services to be available to as many households and businesses in town as possible.
- to provide competition to the town’s other ISPs so as to ensure higher-quality Internet service at lower cost on a future-proof fiber-optic infrastructure.
The MLB now exists to accomplish these goals by working cooperatively with one or more commercial FTTP providers.
Town officials and residents continue to express intense interest in FTTP to enable better telemedicine, smart technologies for infrastructure monitoring, educational platforms for in-classroom and home-based learning, and other advanced applications that are enabled by higher quality FTTP connections.
Statement of Authority:
Falmouth Broadband MLP was established by actions of Falmouth Town Meeting in 2022, which created a municipal Internet utility under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 164, Municipal Light Plants (MLPs). A five-member Falmouth Broadband MLP Board was elected via the 2023 Town Election ballot.