AccessPlus Awarded Grant to Bring Fiber to Affordable Housing Units

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Internet provider AccessPlus was recently awarded the Massachusetts Broadband Institute Retrofit program grant.

"We are committed to delivering high-quality, high-speed internet to the Pittsfield community," said Kevin Alward, CEO of AccessPlus in a recent press release. "This grant allows us to further our mission of ensuring that everyone has access to the fast and reliable internet they need."

The grant was a part of the Healey-Driscoll administration's $10.4 million initiative to modernize the public housing internet in Massachusetts.

This grant will be used to bring high speed fiber internet to 13 multi-unit dwelling properties. This serves 587 housing units in Pittsfield, helping those who work from home.

"Some of the major benefits are the work from home we’ve seen so much of that through the years with covid but really became the standard is that work from and before COVID, if you had one person at home, it was not a big deal to work off the connection that was there," Chief Operating Officer Jason Cummins said. "With fiber broadband you got the symmetrical, that's the big key to that it’s symmetrical internet so you can have the entire household work from home." 

AccessPlus has been with the community for more than 20 years and is the only second round award winner to provide a minimum starting speed of 500 Mbps (megabits per second0 internet connectivity to all its housing units, with options for residents to upgrade to multi-gig fiber internet for even greater speeds.

Just about a year ago AcessPlus' Fiber Broadband Network went online with the first business customers in Pittsfield.

"We’ve been focused on business users up to about a year and a half ago when we really identified that the market here in Western Mass really could use fiber you know a fiber to the play," Cummins said.

AccessPlus has also applied for a third round of funding with MBI to help expand their fiber internet access to more affordable housing units.

Their goal is to expand access to the rest of the Berkshires as well. For those interested in applying, visit www.getaccessplus.com.

WWII Veteran Reflects on D-Day at VFW Post Induction

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
12:25PM / Saturday, June 06, 2026

The members in the picture are Bret Miller, Coast Guard, Desert Storm; Hank Morris, Army, Vietnam; Brad Havill, Navy, Global War on Terror; VFW Post 448 Vice Cmdr. Mark Pompi, Army, Global War on Terrorism, Afghanistan; Post Cmdr. Arnold Perras, Korea; Joe Difillipo, Army, Vietnam; Teri Billington, Navy, Desert Storm; and Carmen Ostrander, Air Force, Afghanistan.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Anthony Salatino Jr. says his memory is getting a little foggy about his time in the Army. 

But he remembers how terrible D-Day was, and feeling lucky he wasn't among those in the initial invasion force 82 years ago. 

 

"One of the most horrible things was in Normandy. We went shortly after D-Day. I got lucky, very lucky on D-Day. We went to a staging area the night before … and at the very end, somebody called, I was in headquarters, they called all the headquarters personnel at the center," the 103-year-old said. "We did not go. There's about 30 of us. The rest of the battalion was gone, and the reason for that was because there was another battalion coming from the States, and they had no headquarters. 

 

"We stayed back, but we did go to Normandy shortly after that, and when we went to Normandy, it was all over."

 

Salatino was attending an induction ceremony on Thursday at the Lt. John N. Truden VFW Post 448. Joseph Texidor, who served in the Army for 17 years with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sworn in as the post's newest member. 

 

Salatino served in the Medical Corps and wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a World War I veteran wounded at Verdun. Salatino was in the Army for about three years.

 

"The whole memory is what I just told you, very, very alive to me," he said. "That is, I can never forget, never forget that."

 

D-Day on June 6, 1944, was the start of Operation Overlord, and the largest invading force to cross the English Channel since 1066. Their goal: to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.