RFP for Last Mile Grants to Provide Broadband Service to Unserved Towns in Western Massachusetts

Procurement Type: RFP
RFP Number: 2017-MBI-02
Date Issued: November 18, 2016
Responses Due: January 11, 2017 by 3:00 PM
Status: Closed

Summary:

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (“Mass Tech Collaborative”), on behalf of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (“MBI”), is issuing this RFP (No. 2017-MBI-02) for grant funding to support last mile broadband connectivity for 40 towns in western Massachusetts that do not currently have widely available residential access to broadband internet service (individually a “Town” and collectively the “Towns”). Mass Tech Collaborative is seeking responses from qualified companies that are interested in designing, building, owning, operating, managing and maintaining a communications network in one or more of the Towns that will provide residents, businesses, government offices and community institutions with broadband internet access that meets or exceeds the current Federal Communications broadband benchmark of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds (the “Network”). The proposed Network in each Town must provide broadband internet access to at least 96% of Town residences.

MBI has allocated up to $19,680,000, in the aggregate, for grant award(s) to broadband provider(s) to support the delivery of broadband service to the 40 unserved Towns consistent with the terms of this RFP. MBI will enter into grant agreements and award grant funds based on a Respondent’s application to provide broadband service to an individual town or a group of Towns. The MBI’s grant allocation for each Town is listed in Attachment D of the RFP. MBI seeks to fund sustainable projects and therefore will only award grants to a financially sound and stable companies with significant experience in building and operating residential broadband networks.

Full details can be found in the ‘Request for Proposals’ PDF linked below.

Schedule:

• November 18, 2016: Request for Proposals issued
• December 13, 2016: Deadline for Bidders Conference registration at 5:00 p.m., email donnelly@masstech.org
• December 14, 2016: Bidders Conference at 3:00 p.m.
• December 16, 2016: Deadline for questions, submitted by e-mail to proposals@masstech.org
• December 22, 2016: Answers to Respondents questions will be posted
• January 11, 2107: Complete responses due by 3:00 p.m.

Downloads:

• Addendum No. 2 (posted December 23, 2016)
• Questions and Answers Document (posted December 22, 2016)
• Addendum No. 1 (posted December 9, 2016)
• Request For Proposals (RFP)
• RFP Attachment F (Grant Proposal Form)
• Draft Cable Television License Agreement

Contacts: 

• MassTech procurement staff

Grant Applications Received:

Below are the six grant applications submitted to MBI in response to this RFP, which closed on January 11, 2017. MBI posted these grant applications to provide stakeholders with transparency and early access to the information being reviewed by MBI.

Please read the following statements before downloading or viewing the grant applications:

• The submission of a grant application in response to this RFP does not automatically qualify a provider to receive a grant from MBI. 
• The grant applications are under review by MBI, and the posting of each grant application to the website does not indicate that the applicant is eligible to receive state funding or participate in the Last Mile Program.
• MBI will publish additional information about the grant program and the review process in a timely manner.  The ultimate award of any grant funding from the MBI would be predicated upon many factors, including municipal feedback and approval by the MBI Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the MassTech Board of Directors.

Grant Application Documents Received: (posted January 23, 2017)

The documents may be downloaded in one of two ways using the links below.

• The first column may be used to download all files for a specific provider as a single compressed zip file, which must be opened and extracted in Windows File Explorer after downloading.
• The second column may be used to download the individual files for a specific provider in their original format, such as PDF, XLS or JPG. The link will take you to a page where you must download each file individually.