Having lived here in Harvard for quite a few years, we have experienced fallen trees, hurricanes, tornadoes, several feet of snow, and other events taking out electricity here in town. Usually it comes back in a few hours, sometimes after days. But this is not about electricity. It is about survival when there is none. When the electricity goes out, Spectrum broadband and its associated services also go out, maybe immediately, maybe after a few hours helped by battery backup or an uninterruptible power supply. So one is left with no immediate means of contacting the outside world or for the world to contact oneself, unless …
This is why our family, like many others in town, has retained Verizon’s plain old telephone service with copper wires that supply electricity to an older emergency telephone kept on standby for electric power outages. The old system works, and it has never failed us over the years. But, of course, it is not enough of a cash cow to Verizon, which wants to remove all those aging copper wires and move on to brighter, more sparkling and lucrative technologies. We have long paid for our local phone number, now an expensive $70 a month for really basic service.
So what about cell coverage? Here at the far end of Westcott Road, cell coverage is one bar at best, on a clear day with the right tail wind if you go out on the street and stand in the right place. There was none in our house until I invested in a Verizon box that routes our cellular calls and texts through the internet. The southern end of town is a cellular phone wasteland. The cellular companies erected a cell tower on the other side of the Codman Hill ridge, perfect for all the travelers on Interstate 495, and very weak signals for us.
I think this explains the importance of modern cellular phone service for all of Harvard, not just my family. It is long past due, and our town government needs to push forward posthaste with planning and construction of a functioning cell tower on Bolton Road, at a relatively high elevation to enable many of us to have reliable cellular service even when the electricity is out. If I had more than a smidgen of confidence that the highly touted 5G cellular service was in the cards real soon now, I would be less strident in my view.
Ben Myers
Westcott Road
