Public Library Mobile Hotspot Lending Program

The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners has distributed over 3000 hotspots to approximately 220 public libraries for loan to library users.

MBLC  has providing the hotspot devices and will cover the cost of the internet service / data plan through the end of September 2022. Libraries may elect to take over the ongoing costs when funding ends.

See which libraries are circulating hotspots

Winding Down the Program

MBLC support for hotspots ends October 1, 2022. We have developed a quick winding-down the program guide to help libraries either transition to a locally supported program, or close things up cleanly. 

Winding Down Guide

Borrower Policy / Agreement Template

We have simplified the borrower policy template and made it more readable.

Borrower Policy Template

The older template, which has more discussion, can be found here.

Promotion – Print Publications and Social Media

Let your library users know about the hotspots. The MBLC Awarehouse has posters and social media graphics that you can use and reuse. Contact our outreach coordinator, Matt Perry, if you have questions or specific requests.

Managing Hotspots with Dashboards

Libraries can manage their hotspots via email and phone messages to T-Mobile using the contact information below.

For more direct control, two dashboards are available:

The T-Mobile Portal manages the hotspot's cellular line service. T-Mobile can help with disabling content filtering and suspend an overdue hotspot.

The Pintrac MDM (Mobile Device Management) Portal manages the hotspot equipment itself by updating the configuration loaded on the device.  Pintrac can manage the network name and password,  and also suspend or restore an overdue hotspot.

See the Cheat Sheet for more details.