VTel: Wireless signal reaches 95% of planned territory

The president of Vermont Telephone Co. broke his silence Thursday and testified in front of two key legislative committees about the company’s progress on a $116 million telecommunications project.

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VTEL: WIRELESS SIGNAL REACHES 95 PERCENT OF PLANNED TERRITORY MAY. 1, 2016, 7:53 PM BY ERIN MANSFIELD 1 COMMENT Michel Guite Michel Guite, president of Vermont Telephone Co., or VTel, testifies in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday. Photo by Erin Mansfield/VTDigger The president of Vermont Telephone Co. broke his silence Thursday and testified in front of two key legislative committees about the company’s progress on a $116 million telecommunications project. Michel Guite testified before the Senate Finance Committee and House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. He had declined previous invitations during this session asking him to testify in front of House Commerce. Guite said the company provides “superb” Internet service through its wireless towers, and he asked the Senate Finance Committee not to move forward with S.R.13, a resolution that asks the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service to audit progress on the World of Wireless project. “The idea has been widely accepted that we had promised to serve absolutely every home in Vermont that didn’t have service,” Guite said, “and my answer this morning is that VTel never committed to serve all unserved households and anchor institutions in Vermont.” Guite told lawmakers there has been “miscommunication” about the status of the broadband project. He said the company has built 131 wireless towers to bring broadband to rural households, and 123 are functional. The company is now spending its own money to upgrade the remaining towers to improve the wireless system, he said. VTel, the trade name for Vermont Telephone Co., was awarded an $81.7 million grant and a $35.2 million loan in 2010 to run fiber-optic cable to households and major institutions in the Springfield area and build 119 towers and antennas to set up a system of wireless broadband in the state’s most rural areas. The company was supposed to finish building the project in 2013, but the Rural Utilities Service extended funding until September 2015. That means the funding has now run out, and if VTel is to complete the network, it must rely on its own money. In recent months, state officials, lawmakers and Vermont’s congressional delegation have become increasingly critical of the company for falling behind on promises it made in 2010. The Public Service Department has said since March that the company will not comply with requests to tell the state which addresses can get service through VTel. On April 6, the congressional delegation sent a letter to the Rural Utilities Service asking for more oversight and confirmation that what VTel has been saying is true. On April 15, the House passed a resolution asking the federal government to audit the $116 million project. A similar resolution sits in the Senate Finance Committee, and lawmakers have not taken action on it. Guite said VTel built the wireless network using the same technology that AT&T and Verizon networks use to provide smartphone data plans to Vermonters. He said at least 95 percent of the households that VTel promised to cover in 2010 can now get Internet service at their homes from one of the wireless towers, and for less money than what they would pay AT&T or Verizon for the same amount of data on their phones. “I can tell you (who gets Internet service) right down to a tiny neighborhood, but I can’t tell you by street,” Guite said. “And I’m saying, gee, if someone really wants to know, they should take the tiny amount of data that we can give them and make their own estimates.” Sen. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, went back and forth with Guite. Ashe said he didn’t understand why people in rural areas “who are desperate” for Internet service wouldn’t simply buy a router through VTel. Tim Ashe Sen. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, is chair of the Senate Committee on Finance. File photo by Roger Crowley/VTDigger “If you’re really miserable, thinking about moving, pained by the inability to sell your home, it just seems strange that hundreds of people would all reach the conclusion that they don’t have service when the service is available by making a phone call,” Ashe said. “What’s going on?” Guite said he was puzzled by the idea that people don’t know enough to call up and buy service. He called the situation between lawmakers and VTel “highly politicized.” Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, told Guite it makes sense to provide the address-by-address information because “the people who expected to have the services that you were going to deliver say they don’t get them, and they’re pretty mad at you.” “If you believe that all of these people who are covered by the towers are served, then it makes sense to find out who they are,” Ayer said. “That’s the information that DPS is asking for and that you decline to deliver because AT&T and Verizon, for example, and T-Mobile and Sprint have not delivered that. But that information would clear this up once and for all.” David Weinstein, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has been leading the congressional delegation’s efforts to hold the company accountable for the project. He said he has no reason to believe the project hasn’t been successful, but VTel won’t provide information to prove it. “VTel said in their application to (the Rural Utilities Service) that they would serve virtually 100 percent of Vermont’s unserved households, so what we would like is evidence that that is in fact the case,” Weinstein said in an interview. “There’s no way for us to evaluate whether or not this is a success unless we see who in fact is going to get the signal and how strong that signal is.” “We’re asking for the information to evaluate whether it’s a success, and VTel’s failure to provide that information certainly gives the impression, and maybe it’s a false impression, that there is something to hide,” he said. “But we certainly are not alleging that.” Rep. Maureen Dakin, D-Colchester, told Guite he should improve the company’s marketing if the dustup with the Legislature is simply a misunderstanding. “As a business person, wouldn’t that tell you then that you need to boost your PR and boost getting your message out?” she asked. Guite replied: “We kind of like to keep our mouth shut. We just don’t like to tell people what we’re doing.”