Three different start-up companies are pursuing plans to radically expand the Island’s broadband connections, and in the process dramatically improve the Island’s cell phone, Internet and cable television service.

OpenCape Corp, based in West Barnstable, is planning a wireless network with 350 miles of fiber-optic cable connecting more than 60 anchor institutions: hospitals, schools, municipalities and research institutions where direct connections to the network will be built.

Meanwhile Vineyard-based GPCS Fiber Communications is looking to build a new fiber-optic system that would exclusively serve the Island. Its plan calls for approximately 26,600 yards (about 15 miles) of submarine fiber-optic cable to be laid from Fairhaven to the Island via Woods Hole.

Then there is Texel Communications, another Island start-up company, which also is looking to create a new fiber optic connection to the Vineyard and deliver a triple play bundle of high-speed internet, cable television and digital voice telephone.

If even one of these three plans is successful, the Vineyard would vault from having some of the poorest broadband connections in the region to some of the best, which backers suggest would be a huge boon to economic development.

Of the three companies, OpenCape appears to have the inside track, after the company last week received a $32 million federal stimulus grant awarded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration as part of the $4.7 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, which was created as part of federal stimulus legislation.

The money will be used as part of a $40 million project to create a 350-mile fiber-optic network, microwave wireless network and regional data center across Cape Cod. The system would connect to Dukes County at the West Tisbury school, on Chappaquiddick and on Penikese Island.

The grant will be combined with matching funds totaling $8 million from the state, Barnstable County and RCN Metro Optical Networks, to construct a comprehensive informational network to support the economic, public and governmental needs of the southeast Massachusetts region.

OpenCape president Dan Gallagher told the Gazette this week his company aims to build a “middle line” network; it will allow all interested companies to use its system to pipe Internet, cell phone and television signals to the Island.

“It’s like we are providing a water main for information. We don’t get involved with the last mile of connection, we only provide the middle mile for the information to travel on,” he said.

Mr. Gallagher said his nonprofit company does not see itself as competing with the other two companies looking to build fiber-optic networks to the Island. “We are not proprietary at all; we don’t try to monopolize the network. If someone else runs a fiber-optic system to the Vineyard, fine with us.”

He argued the construction of new broadband networks is akin to building bridges and roads, vital to a region’s economic development. He compared the expansion of the nation’s broadband to the public works projects under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression.

“As far as I’m concerned this is infrastructure. It’s just like the train station that was built in a lot of towns many years ago; if the train station didn’t go in your town, you didn’t get the surge in development. But now the train tracks are being replaced by broadband which can connect to entire regions.

“I think the Cape and Islands needs to diversity its economy. We can’t continue to rely on tourists and seasonal visitors . . . this is a chance for major economic development, so our kids can afford to stay here and buy homes.”

OpenCape is operating under an advanced timeline. Under the terms of the federal grant, all construction must be completed within three years. The first steps is to start engineering and legal groundwork, before construction can begin, Mr. Gallagher said.

The first stage of construction will create a loop connecting Hyannis, Sagamore and Woods Hole, which will have immediate benefits for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Art Gaylord, an OpenCape board member and director of computer and information services at WHOI, said the benefits of improved broadband are far-reaching.

“From the Oceanographic perspective, it will allow us to vastly improve our connection to the observatory off the coast of the Vineyard [at South Beach] . . . we are talking about 20 million bits per second . . . a big-time upgrade.”

Mr. Gaylord also said he did not see the two other companies as competition. “You can never have enough broadband. The demand will only increase in the years to come as technologies improve,” he said.

Chris Lynch, vice president of Global Protection Communication Systems (GPCS) said, “[OpenCape has] an entirely different type of plan that relies more on microwave signals. If both plans move forward, the microwave system could be used exclusively by emergency services or as a backup system for the Vineyard.”

Fiber optic communication dramatically speeds up the download time for large video and content files from the Internet, transmitting by light signal.

Currently, most telephone, television and Internet traffic on the Vineyard comes to the Island via some type of cable, but is transmitted to and from the mainland on microwave radio signals.

Mr. Lynch said the estimated $7 million cost of the GPCS project would be financed through investors and borrowing. The company would then lease use of the cable to telecommunication companies such as Comcast and Verizon.

The cable would arrive at Lake Tashmoo in Tisbury, where it would be connected to existing utility wires. GPCS Fiber has applied for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the plan would also need approval from the Tisbury conservation commission, and may be referred to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for review as a development of regional impact.

Mr. Lynch said a fiber-optic system brings wide-ranging benefits: “This could possibly take care of the Island’s communications needs forever. All of a sudden the Island would have the same broadband capacity as any urban area in the nation, which would be a major selling point to attract new companies.”

Jim Glavin of Texel Communications, the other company looking to connect a fiber optic cable to the Vineyard, said his company would provide connection speeds that are currently impossible for existing providers to match. Of the three the proposals, Texel’s is in the earliest planning stages, and the company has yet to file an application with the Army Corps of Engineers or secure a large portion of the funding it would require.