Town of Hanover Awarded Community Compact Municipal Fiber Grant 8/18/23
The Town of Hanover is pleased to announce it has been awarded $200,000 through the Community Compact Municipal Fiber Grant. This highly competitive grant will allow the town to construct a fiber optic network within our community. The grant will provide funds to install six miles of fiber optic cable, connecting seven municipal buildings and improving overall network speed, integrity, and reliability. The current VPN system will be converted to a fiber optic wide-area network. This new fiber optic infrastructure will also significantly upgrade the town’s public safety radio infrastructure. Hanover Information Technology, Hanover Public Schools, the Town Manager’s Office, and the Hanover Fire Department/Emergency Management Agency collaborated on this effort.
For several years, the town's dependence on a VPN-based network, coupled with multiple Internet service providers, has resulted in a costly, slow, and unreliable network for Hanover Public Schools students and staff on a daily basis. The current technology demands within Hanover's municipal buildings far outmatch the ability to provide sufficient, secure, reliable, and fast service. The majority of technology-related issues within the schools are a result of insufficient bandwidth. This project will alleviate these issues while greatly enhancing cyber security within our municipal buildings.
The town aims to connect all municipal buildings in the community with a fiber optic loop. This costly project has been on the Capital Plan for several years and is slated to be discussed and vetted this year. Working in collaboration with the Regional Old Colony Communications Center in Duxbury, this grant will be combined with already planned work that will allow several additional municipal buildings to be joined onto this fiber network – at no additional cost to the town. Additionally, this new fiber network will enable the town’s public safety departments to improve their radio and communications infrastructure, enhancing emergency operations on a day-to-day basis. This grant award allows the town to take a significant step forward and several steps toward completing its overall goal of constructing a fiber loop within the community with very little direct impact on Hanover taxpayers. Additionally, once this fiber optic network is installed, substantial cost savings will be realized annually.
Read the Healey-Driscoll Administration Awards $4 Million in Community Compact Grants to Municipalities and School Districts, July 6, 2023, press release for additional information.