LEVERETT, Mass. (AP) — Inside a green metal building in Leverett, lightning-fast internet connections pulse through yellow-coated fibers, one per customer.

One strand belongs to Susan Valentine, an artist who lives down the hill on Long Plain Road in this Franklin County town.

"Man, it was a long time coming," she said recently.

Another fiber threaded into the rack inside one of LeverettNet's two electronics huts provides Kathleen Lafferty's economic lifeline.

Nearly two years after Leverett first lit segments of its fiber-optic broadband service, this $3.7 million project is a point of pride...