10Gbps Internet for $400 a month can be yours if you move to Vermont

Rural telco also offers 1 gigabit for $60, with help of government grant.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/10gbps-internet-for-400-a-month-can-be-yours-if-you-move-to-vermont

10Gbps Internet for $400 a month can be yours if you move to Vermont Rural telco also offers 1 gigabit for $60, with help of government grant. by Jon Brodkin - Jun 8, 2015 5:27pm EDT A telco in rural Vermont says it has just begun offering 10Gbps Internet speeds to homes for $400 a month. Vermont Telephone (VTel) was already selling symmetrical gigabit Internet to residents for just $59.95 per month, an even better deal than Google Fiber. But availability is limited to VTel's rural customer base of about 18,000 homes and businesses in and around Springfield, Vermont, which are being converted from copper to fiber thanks to substantial help from the federal government. The company is decommissioning its copper network. FURTHER READING GIGABIT INTERNET AND PHONE SERVICE FOR $48 A MONTH? IT REALLY EXISTS With $116M in federal funds, Vermont telco offers gigabit fiber and LTE. "VTel’s new 10 Gig residential Internet has been made possible by an $85 million VTel telephone network award from the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS)," VTel said in the announcement of its 10Gbps service. "This RUS project is expected to be complete by June 30, 2015, on budget and on schedule." Construction has taken three years. We first wrote about the project in 2013 when residents could "only" buy gigabit service. VTel has a 2.5TB monthly data cap but says it is lenient when it comes to enforcing it. While VTel's standalone gigabit plan costs $59.95 a month, it charges even less—$54.95 per month—for gigabit Internet bundled with phone service. There are more regulatory fees applied to phone service than broadband, however, which would change the full price. Government grants aren't making gigabit speeds available nationwide, as many residents are stuck with Internet of just a few megabits per second, sometimes not even that. Gigabit fiber deployments are picking up steam in some areas with construction by Google, AT&T, and others. Comcast is going a step beyond that with a new 2Gbps service. But 10Gbps is the kind of service generally sold only to businesses, as it would be difficult for individuals and families to use that kind of bandwidth. "Few Vermont providers offer 10Gbps to even Vermont’s largest corporate customers, with costs often exceeding $15,000 per month," VTel said in its announcement. Though VTel's residential business focuses on a small area, the company's fiber network is not just for serving rural homes. VTel operates a multi-state fiber network. "VTel’s 1,700-mile optical fiber network, connecting Vermont to New York and Boston and Montreal, has pioneered lower wholesale Internet prices for large users in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Canada for almost 20 years," the company says. "VTel’s fastest-in-Vermont fiber network, offering data pipes at speeds of 100 Gig, today serves three of the largest research universities in the northeast, many of Vermont’s largest high schools, and recently upgraded Burlington School District’s Internet services to 10Gbps."