Case Study 1 In the Boston area, residents who visit the local library, town hall, or their children’s public school are probably used to seeing people surfing the Internet, whether checking the news, doing research for homework, watching online videos, or looking for a job. Very recently, if you traveled into more rural parts of Central and Western Massachusetts, you would have found large sections of the region where those tasks weren’t possible, as many public buildings in these small towns were broadband dead zones, relying on slow dial-up or satellite connections. The Internet connectivity and broadband access that most of the United States takes for granted were scarce to nonexistent in a decent swath of these regions, including a large portion of The Berkshires—that is, unti

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