Michitson Calls for Mayor-Council Conference on Bringing Fiber and 5G Internet to Haverhill

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It is a digital world and in order to stay competitive in the marketplace, the City of Haverhill needs to get on board the 5G, deep fiber bandwagon. That is the opinion of City Councilor John A. Michitson who made a plea for a strong broadband strategy for the city at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

Michitson explained that 5G, simply put, increases bandwidth, which allows for faster delivery of more data—a must-have ability for businesses in the 21st century. But to do that, he says, we must have fiber optic cables and lots of it. He cited a study that shows that there has been a 20-fold increase in data traffic since 2011—a pace that will eventually leave our current systems in the dust.

“We have to really do some thinking here in Haverhill; how we’re going to get fiber, how we’re going to get broadband over the long run because that’s kind of the equivalent of just having dirt roads. We need fiber like we needed highways,” Michitson said.

Michitson said that neither Comcast nor Verizon have any plans to bring fiber into the community but there are other companies that might if it were cost effective to do so.

As a result, the Council is proposing a workshop with the mayor and themselves to see if money can be carved out of the 2021 budget to look into available options.

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