Broadband Grant to Vt. Tops Nation

Vermont Telephone, a Springfield telecommunications company, was awarded $116 million in federal dollars yesterday to bring wireless broadband Internet coverage to rural areas of Vermont where service has been lacking.

http://www.vnews.com/08052010/6901163.htm                             # # # # Published 8/5/2010  •  Broadband Grant to Vt. Tops Nation  •  Springfield Firm Gets $116 Million in Stimulus  •  By Katie Beth Ryan  •  Valley News Staff Writer  •  Springfield, Vt. -- Vermont Telephone, a Springfield-area telecommunications company, was awarded $116 million in federal dollars yesterday to bring wireless broadband Internet coverage to rural areas of Vermont where service has been lacking.  •    The amount awarded to the company, also known as VTel, represents close to 10 percent of a $1.2 billion package of U.S. Department of Agriculture broadband grants from the federal stimulus program announced yesterday.  •  Ted Brady, an aide to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said VTel's proposal “clearly rose to the top of a very long, very competitive process.” Meanwhile, VTel President Michel Guité praised Vermont's congressional delegation, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., yesterday for making a strong case for his company and the need for high-speed Internet for the approximately 114,000 residents still using dialup service.  •  “We're competing with 50 other states … Here's a rare case where Vermont is getting much more per capita than any other state,” he said.  •  The package awarded to VTel is divided into an $81 million broadband stimulus grant and a $35 million loan. The company itself is putting up an additional $30 million in capital for a three-part project that will expand broadband access, strengthen the connection VTel customers in 14 towns have with a one-gigabit fiber-optic network, and jumpstart a series of forums aimed at educating residents statewide about broadband.  •  VTel's system of bringing broadband to areas of the state where dial-up is the only way to get online is being called Wireless Open World, and will bring a fourth-generation format of wireless to the state.  •  “There's nothing tremendously unusual about the technology,” Guité said. “It's simply that because we're local and we’re committed to our rural area, we’re deploying it to our rural area, the same way that AT&T and T-Mobile are doing in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. It's the utilization of a rural footprint.”  •  Between bringing high-speed Internet access to the large pockets of the state where it currently doesn't exist, building upon the state's existing fiber-optic network and offering forums on broadband, the project is expected to create in the neighborhood of 1,800 direct and indirect jobs in Vermont. The project is expected to be completed in 2012 or 2013, said Guité.  •  Chris Campbell, executive director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority, said he was reasonably confident that the project would reach the vast majority of Vermont homes currently lacking broadband service.  •  “We're going to look to see are there any final remaining pockets,” he said. “I think it's clear that the VTel project will vastly reduce the remain pockets that aren't covered by a broadband project. To the extent that there are, it’s going to make it vastly more likely that we can reach every last one of those.”  •  Though the news of VTel's funding was welcome in many corners of the state, it left smaller broadband initiative ECFiber pondering its future yesterday.  •  “It's going to be difficult for ECFiber to compete with a government grant of over $80 million,” said Stan Williams of Norwich, chairman of the board of directors of ValleyNet, which partnered with ECFiber earlier this year to broaden Internet access in many Upper Valley towns.  •  “I think a telecommunications investment, whether it's public or private, is a good thing,” Williams added. But he said that he had his doubts about the reliability of wireless, and whether it would be the answer to Vermont's broadband conundrum.  •  “People expect 99.999 percent connectivity with their telephone and increasingly their Internet service. Wireless doesn't provide that,” he said.  •  Also included in the $1.2 billion broadband package announced yesterday were grants for two New Hampshire-based telecommunications companies to bring broadband to underserved communities. Merrimack County Telephone Company received $2,021,197, while Kearsarge Telephone Company was granted $372,532. Both companies are owned by TDS Telecom of Madison, Wis.   •