About – GCET

Our History

The GCET story is about a community doing for itself what no one else would. Many times, over many years, the City asked its phone and cable companies to invest in broadband infrastructure upgrades and the expansion of services. We saw promising businesses move out of Greenfield due to outmoded or inaccessible broadband, and we were unable to attract other businesses that loved our physical location but needed a better communications experience.

In September 2011 Greenfield had just lost a high-tech start-up due to the city’s inadequate broadband. That year Greenfield’s Mayor, William Martin, established an economic development strategy: to build a 21st century telecommunications infrastructure to support every resident and business now and well into the future. GCET was formed with the overwhelming approval of voters and the unanimous support of the Town Council in both 2014 and 2015. In 2015 GCET was created by the state Legislature and it was then that GCET became your community-owned voice, data and Internet provider.

Community Broadband 2.0

FTTP (fiber to the premises) has been the standard for high-speed broadband networks, but the cost of building fiber to the home and business made FTTP impossible to achieve. Couple this with the fact that most of today's internet usage takes place on mobile devices and FTTP becomes a non-starter. GCET recognized this back in 2011 when we were in the planning stage and came up with a better solution.

GCET has redefined how homes and businesses connect to the Internet. Our GCET network is a combination of our 10Gbps fiber optic core, distribution and access networks, coupled with 900+ 1.7Gbps wireless anywhere/everywhere local access points.

It seems like we were onto something back in 2011 when we initially designed the GCET network. In major U.S. markets businesses like Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon and others are now restructuring their FTTP business models in favor of the hybrid fiber/wireless strategy .