http://www.vnews.com/10232011/8110414.htm
Published 10/23/2011
VTel Project Shows Progress
By Chris Fleisher
Valley News Staff Writer
Springfield, Vt. -- Late last month, a large white sign was erected outside the headquarters of Vermont Telephone Co.: “Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
The “project” hardly required an introduction to most Vermonters, who've been eager for VTel to deliver on its promise, made a year ago, to bring “state of the art” broadband service to rural homes around the state. Vermont's congressional delegation, development officials and VTel President Michel Guite promised that the $116 million in federal stimulus money the small telecom received would spark a “broadband revolution.”
At the time, critics wondered whether VTel could pull it off. As months passed without visible signs of progress, some, including Sharon resident Tory Rhodin, have wondered whether the critics were correct.
“Obviously, it's of concern to us because a year has gone by and we haven't heard anything at all,” Rhodin said last week.
Rhodin, her husband and their teenage daughter are among those who are eagerly awaiting the day when broadband is extended to their community. They are on a limited-data plan with Verizon that uses mobile technology for access to the Web. VTel's proposed “4G/LTE” wireless network would be an enormous improvement in speed and capacity.
So far, it has been a dream deferred. But there are signs that the much-hyped broadband revolution is becoming a reality.
VTel workers have begun running high-speed fiber optic lines in North Springfield. Eventually, fiber will be extended to the other communities VTel serves, including Hartland and portions of Woodstock, Bridgewater and Killington. When finished, the fiber network will give more than 15,000 VTel customers some of the fastest broadband capabilities in the world.
VTel's fiber network represents nearly half of the overall cost of the $146 million effort to expand fiber and wireless broadband around the state. (VTel is contributing $30 million.) The fiber portion of the project should be mostly finished by the end of 2012, according to Sharon Combes-Farr, VTel's marketing director.
“The majority of that work should be done by the end of next year, but it's possible that the fiber in some of our more rural areas would take into 2013,” she said in an interview last week. “The project, it's not considered delayed, because obviously it takes time.”
Meanwhile, Internet-starved residents in the most rural corners of Vermont are waiting on the second part of the project -- a “4G/LTE” wireless network to compare with the most advanced wireless technology in urban areas.
The permitting process for new antennas and towers has just begun, and the construction of the wireless network will happen over the next two years.
Combes-Farr said there are some areas where the company would like to be further along, but there is nothing that threatens the 2013 federal deadline for completion.
“With the construction season being certain months, it would have been nicer to have more, in terms of what would be ‘in the ground,' ” she said. “But we feel that there's no danger at all of meeting the timeline of the 2013 requirement.”
Still, what has VTel been doing for the past year?
Planning and Paperwork
Expanding broadband to homes tucked into hills and hollows throughout the state is a complex feat of engineering and design, said Karen Marshall, chief of ConnectVT, an initiative set up to implement Gov. Peter Shumlin's plan to achieve universal broadband and mobile service in the state.
“Seventy-five percent of a project is in the design, engineering, planning and acquiring the equipment,” Marshall said last week.
Contacting engineers and designers was VTel's first step once the award was announced in August 2010.
By September, the company was in touch with multiple engineering contractors who were working on both sides of the network -- the fiber network for VTel's existing customers and the wireless portion for the rest of the state, said Combes-Farr.
Still, it was slow going. By the end of December, VTel had spent only $237,368 of the $116 million stimulus award. More than $72,000 went to a single vendor, New Jersey-based The Telmarc Group, for “preapplication consulting services,” according to the quarterly report filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service, which awarded the stimulus money.
Telmarc helped VTel put together the application for the award, but has not had any involvement with the project after that.
“I haven't spoken to (VTel president) Michel (Guite) since well before he received the award,” said Terrence McGarty, managing partner at Telmarc.
By the first quarter of this year, however, VTel was beginning to make progress on the design and planning of the network. It had contracted with several engineering firms and, by June 30, spent $1.8 million for contractors and vendors, according to the most recent federal records available.
There was other work to be done. VTel hoped to avoid building hundreds of towers around the state and sought to use existing structures as much as possible, Combes-Farr said. VTel doesn't own all of those existing structures, which means it has to come to lease agreements with the people or entities that own the towers.
“A very significant amount of work on these projects is nailing down the specific sites,” said Chris Campbell, executive director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority. “You don't always get the sites you wanted. That whole process is probably the most lengthy.”
And the process is ongoing. The network of sites is pretty much mapped out, Combes-Farr said, though VTel is now identifying exactly where the antennas will be placed. Teams of VTel workers have been looking at any tall structure -- existing towers, church steeples, rooftops -- and trying to reach lease agreements with the owners.
“They're literally talking to farmers about silos,” Combes-Farr said.
Much of the work leading up to this point, however, involved sorting through issues with the federal government.
VTel didn't get just one stimulus award. The $116 million included an $81.6 million grant and a $35 million loan, each component bringing its own set of requirements for accounting and transparency. Plus, the company also received a separate $12.3 million stimulus grant for another project known as “VT Bell,” a fiber “middle-mile” network to connect schools and hospitals in Essex, Stowe, New Haven and Berlin.
The VT Bell grant came through a different federal department -- the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. There was concern among federal regulators to make sure that these different pots of money stayed separate, so the funds were paying for the projects for which they were intended.
One result was to have two different entities handle the projects. A subsidiary called “VTel Wireless” would oversee the wireless portion known as “Wireless Open World,” or WOW. Vermont Telephone Co. would handle the VT Bell project.
“There was a little bit of an interesting complexity because we had this other award,” Combes-Farr said. “There was a little bit of long discussions between our side and the two federal agencies to figure out exactly how these two projects should be structured. So that took up, frankly, more time than anyone would have wanted.”
There were, perhaps, some ways in which VTel could have moved faster. One condition of the stimulus award from the Rural Utility Service was that VTel include television service in the “WOW” project. VTel, however, didn't previously offer television service and would need to get a Certificate of Public Good from Vermont's Public Service Board, which oversees the state’s utilities, to do so.
VTel didn't begin seeking its certificate until late June 2011, which was 11 months after it was approved for the federal funds.
The timing was driven by the negotiations between the two federal agencies. VTel needed to know which corporate entity -- VTel Wireless or Vermont Telephone Co. -- would need to apply for the certificate.
“It is well-documented that we technically ‘could have' applied earlier,” Combes-Farr said, “but we applied as soon as humanly possible following our final RUS review.”
Working Toward 2013
VTel got its Certificate of Public Good for television service on Sept. 20. The next day, the American Recovery Act sign went up outside its headquarters and VTel workers began hanging the fiber optic cables in North Springfield. Over the course of the next year, the company will build out its fiber network to its 18,000 existing customers.
“The majority of that work should be done by the end of next year,” Combes-Farr said, “but it's possible that the fiber in some of our more rural areas would take into 2013.”
The wireless build-out will be more complicated.
The certificate of public good for television is just one of many -- perhaps more than 100 -- that that VTel will need to acquire for the WOW project.
The company estimates that it will have to install about 200 antennas on towers around the state. Each one of those antennas requires Public Service Board approval.
Legislation passed during the last session will help speed up that process by shortening the review period for certain telecom installations and streamlining the process.
In June, VTel started that process by applying for certificates on three towers it plans to build in Colchester. More recently, it received certificates for wireless installations in Charlotte, Orwell, West Windsor and Barnard.
VTel is in the final stages of choosing the vendor that will provide all of the wireless equipment. A decision should be made in a matter of weeks, Combes-Farr said.
“The selection of that vendor is really the biggest critical component on the wireless side,” she said.
Questions over which communities will receive wireless service are still being answered, Combes-Farr said. It will largely be dictated by an agreement between VTel, Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service to develop a smart-grid system to more efficiently manage energy use in the state.
VTel's wireless network will be “the backbone” that system, in which 250,000 advanced meters will be installed around the state. Those meters will transmit information to and from homes via VTel's wireless network.
The communities where smart-grid technology is installed first also will likely be the first places that get VTel's 4G wireless service, Combes-Farr said. “We know the smart-grid sites need to be up in the early portion (of the timeline),” she said.
At this point, VTel and the state and federal officials who have been watching the project are comfortable with the progress that's been made.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., credited Marshall's appointment as chief of ConnectVT earlier this year with helping spur the effort. “I very much appreciate the focused attention Governor Shumlin's administration has given to this issue, and my staff has stayed in close contact” with Marshall, Sanders said in an email.
Given everything the project entails, good progress is being made, Marshall said. Vermonters everywhere should expect that they will have some option for broadband within two years.
“People are saying when is it going to turn on?” Marshall said. “I think we're still on track.”
VTel customers, such as Bill Vines, can only hope that's true. Vines is co-owner of Killington's Birch Ridge Inn. In the 14 years that he has been the innkeeper, his guests' broadband needs have grown dramatically.
A decade ago, the most ardent technology users brought along a laptop and hooked up to the Inn's dial-up service.
“Now, literally everyone coming through the door has smart phones and are demanding Wi-Fi connectivity,” he said.
Vines has DSL service, which is barely able to meet the demand for broadband at the Inn. Over Columbus Day weekend, Vines had 20 guests and 22 devices hooked into his network at once, nearly crashing the system.
Vines has prepared for his winter ski visitors this year by adding some additional DSL lines. It is a temporary patch until VTel extends fiber to Killington.
That day can't come soon enough.
“If the service goes like they say and as I expect it will,” he said, “it will go a long way.”
this is a joke right?
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