Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs), which were the subject of a recently released ILSR report, continue to make steady inroads in delivering high-quality broadband access to long-neglected rural Vermont residents.

In 2021 the Vermont legislature passed Act 71, ensuring CUDs would play a key role in expanding fiber access in the Green Mountain state. In Vermont, municipally-led CUDs – municipal entities created by two or more towns with a goal of building communication infrastructure – can legally fund needed broadband expansions through debt, grants, and donations – but not taxes, though they themselves are tax-exempt nonprofits.

The CUD model allows municipalities to bond together to tackle broadband network deployments that might otherwise prove too costly or logistically difficult if attempted alone.

The results have been transformative for state residents long underserved or completely unserved by the state’s regional incumbent monopoly providers. Locals at times have likened the transformation to moving out of the “dark ages.”

Much of Vermont’s $150 million ARPA-based broadband package went toward assisting CUDs in a state where 85 percent of municipalities and 90 percent of all underserved locations fall under an existing CUD’s jurisdiction.

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

In a historic effort to blanket Vermont with fiber-to-the-home networks, the Green Mountain State has been banking on a community broadband-driven approach to connect the unconnected through its ten Communications Union Districts (CUDs).

Now, state leaders are adding another community-rooted program to its toolbox that promises to help fill the ranks of the very workforce building the networks.

Earlier this week, the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) announced the launch of a new Fiber Optic Apprenticeship Program officials say will put “participants to work right away, allowing them to learn on the job and earn a paycheck from the start.”

The workforce development initiative will be a part of the Telecommunications Industry Registered Apprenticeship Program (TIRAP), a “competency-based apprenticeship” sponsored by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA). And in addition to earning a paycheck, apprentices who complete the program will also earn a national credential recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor.

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VCBB Executive Director Christine Hallquist characterized the apprenticeship program as “a huge opportunity for Vermonters to get into a new career without any cost to them that will provide a paycheck from day one and many options for career advancement.”

Building fiber networks in sparsely populated rural communities is not cheap. And when it comes to deploying fiber drops to individual homes set back relatively far off the main roads where fiber lines pass by, it can prove to be cost prohibitive to connect those households.

But in Vermont, the push to ensure every household in the Green Mountain State has access to the gold-standard of Internet connectivity, the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) this week unanimously approved the creation of a new “low-income long and underground drop program.”

“We’re not talking about (connecting) multi-million mansions two miles off the road, but households with a true need,” VCBB Deputy Director Robert Fish tells ILSR, adding:

“What good is a fiber network if households can’t connect? This (program) is one way we can address affordability, whether it’s long aerial drops or underground.”

Re-Investing Leftover Federal Rescue Plan Funds

Approved by the VCBB at their regular meeting on September 9, the new program will use $2.5 million in leftover federal Rescue Plan funds to subsidize the cost of connecting low-income households in high-cost locations.

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“These are Capital Project Funds (courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act) from projects that came in under budget,” Fish explained, noting how most of the $245 million the state has received to build out broadband networks has already been awarded to the 10 Communications Union Districts (CUDs) now bringing fiber service to Vermonters long neglected by the big incumbent providers.

Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs), which were the subject of a recently released ILSR report, continue to make steady inroads in delivering high-quality broadband access to long-neglected rural Vermont residents.

That includes locally owned not-for-profit municipal operation Maple Broadband, which has completed the first phase of its broadband network and is busy on an expansion.

Maple Broadband is technically an extension of the Addison County Communications Union District (ACCUD), a coalition of 20 different member towns working collaboratively to bring gigabit-capable fiber to residents long left unserved or underserved by regional telecom giants.

In September of 2021 Maple Broadband announced a public private partnership with Vermont-based Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom (WCVT), to build and operate a district-wide fiber network. The $30 million network is, in part, propped up by ARPA funds and a $9.1 million grant from the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB).

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Three years later and the CUD says it has completed the first phase of its network; laying 143.5 miles of fiber and passing 1,647 homes and businesses in portions of the Vermont towns of Cornwall, Orwell, Shoreham, Whiting, Salisbury, and Middlebury.

A new documentary, produced by the Vermont production company Well Told Films and the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB), tells the uplifting story of how community-minded Vermonters came together to solve a common challenge: the lack of high-speed Internet connectivity across the Green Mountain State.

“Connected: Vermont’s Grassroots Effort for Rural Broadband” recently premiered at the Capitol Theater in Montpelier, giving viewers a front-row seat at how hundreds of volunteers (and later state leaders) rallied around the emergence of Communications Union Districts (CUDs) as the state's primary vehicle to bring high-quality Internet service to every resident and business in one of the most rural states in the nation.

The 35-minute film brings to life the story of how a community-based solution to solving the digital divide in Vermont came to be, while showcasing all of the progress that's been made since ECFiber, the state's first CUD, was established in 2007.

It begins with the celebration of ECFiber completing its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network last year, an event at which U.S. Sen. Peter Welch succinctly summarized why the community broadband movement in Vermont was, and is, necessary:

"All this started with what at the time was really a radical idea – that if we in rural Vermont were going to depend on the big telecommunication companies to wire our homes to get us Internet, we'd be waiting until our grandchildren had grandchildren."

The Otter Creek Communications Union District (CUD) has been awarded a $9.9 million grant by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB). It’s the latest effort by the state to use CUDs to deliver affordable fiber broadband access to the long-neglected rural corners of Vermont.

According to the CUD’s announcement, the funding will help deploy affordable fiber access to roughly 4,100 homes and businesses by 2025. The fiber deployment will be done in partnership with Consolidated Communications, which says it has deployed fiber to 110,000 Vermont homes and businesses since 2021.

The deployment should ultimately bring broadband access to 85 percent of homes and businesses in the Otter Creek CUD area, which covers 17 towns and one city in and near Rutland, Vermont in the southwestern part of the state as 2,300 of the locations targeted by this latest round of funding currently have no access to any broadband service whatsoever.

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“We’re excited to work collaboratively with Consolidated to bring future-proof Internet to the 18 communities within our CUD,” Otter Creek CUD Chair Laura Black said in a statement. “This funding will put us well on our way to meeting the goal of universal service in the Rutland region, bringing all the opportunities that come with reliable, high-speed internet. The Otter Creek CUD board is proud to be on the way to bringing the broadband infrastructure this community needs to participate in the global economy.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded a $17.5 million grant to NEK Community Broadband (NEK Broadband), providing another shot in the arm for Vermont’s fast-growing collection of Communications Union Districts (CUDs). Such CUDs continue to play a starring role in Vermont’s efforts to finally conquer the digital divide.

NEK Broadband’s latest grant comes from the USDA’s ReConnect Loan & Grant Program, which helps defray the costs of network hardware and broadband deployment to rural and traditionally underserved U.S. markets.

The program this week doled out an additional $714 million in grants and loans to projects across 19 states.

NEK Broadband officials say its $17.5 million award will be combined with a $5.8 million investment to deliver affordable fiber access to 3,295 homes, 94 businesses, 183 farms and 11 educational facilities across 22 towns in Orleans, Caledonia, and Essex counties in Vermont.

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“For too long, large pockets of our state have been denied this critical resource because companies haven’t found it profitable enough to invest,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said in an announcement of NEK’s latest grant. “This federal funding is transformative, because the money is going directly to the very communities who will benefit, instead of having to go through those who care more about profits than delivering service.”