As states struggle to readjust their plans to expand high-speed Internet access in the wake of the Trump administration “termination” of the Digital Equity Act, Vermont is working to address the multi-million dollar shortfall by aligning the state’s Digital Empowerment initiative with its newly established Affordable Long Drop Program.

The Affordable Long Drop Program was established to provide grants to eligible Internet service providers (ISPs) in order to cover the connection costs for Vermonters whose homes are beyond standard drop distances.

Typically, an ISP will pay for a standard drop, which is the final external link that connects a provider's distribution network to the end-user's location – a distance that most often spans a couple hundred feet or less.

In rural areas around the country, community-minded operators like telephone and electric cooperatives will often cover the first quarter of a mile. This has also been the case in Vermont, where many of the state’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs) have been footing the bill to cover as much as the first 2,000 feet of drop distance. But, as with any predominantly rural state, there are a number of homes located just beyond that 2,000 foot range.

The construction costs of extending fiber lines can get pricey the further the home is away from the main fiber routes. Vermont’s Affordable Long Drop Program aims to help pay for the drops costs of the last mile networks that are currently being built across the state to help ensure residents in harder-to-reach locations can still get Internet access.

Vermont’s Otter Creek Communications Utility District (CUD) says it has completed its ambitious fiber deployment, bringing affordable access to more than 6,000 homes and businesses in the Rutland County region of the Green Mountain State.

Otter Creek is another example of the way Vermont’s long under-served communities are bonding together via innovative new partnerships taking direct aim at the digital divide.

When last we had checked in on Otter Creek CUD, the CUD had just received a $9.9 million grant by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB). Otter Creek CUD then leveraged that grant funding to form a public-private partnership with Consolidated Communications.

Image

Otter Creek CUD Chair Laura Black tells ILSR that the partnership involved 335 miles of new fiber passing *6,000 locations. Of the total target reach, 1290 locations had never had broadband access previously. Between the Otter Creek grant awards and contributions from private providers, more than $24 million has been invested in Rutland County to expand fiber access.  

“We partnered with the existing ILEC business in most of our area, Consolidated Communications, to build and operate the fiber network with both their own contribution and grant funding we were able to secure,” Black said. “As well, a portion of our area was peeled off to allow the ILEC in three of the towns in our District to be served by the existing small ILEC business – Shoreham Telephone – under their own grant funding program (EACAM).”

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.

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.

Image

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.

Image

“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.

The popular Vermont Communications Union District (CUD) Northwest Fiberworx (NWFX) has received a $20.2 million infusion in state American Rescue Plan Act dollars to extend affordable fiber broadband into long-underserved regions of the Green Mountain State.

The St. Albans-based CUD is a nonprofit special purpose municipality with 22 member towns. Its latest build will connect 3,800 unserved and underserved households in Franklin and Grand Isle counties in the Northwest part of the state.

Great Works Internet Vermont (GWI VT) will design the network and manage the operations, though Fiberworx will own the finished build.

Image

“We have a unique model, that of which we will build, own and maintain a fiber-to-the-premise open-access network,” Northwest Fiberworx Network Operations Manager, Mary Kay Raymond said in a statement.

The new $20.2 million grant awarded late last month by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCCB), was made possible by 2021 federal COVID relief funding courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act.

“Northwest Fiberworx and their partner Great Works Internet Vermont have found a way to bring service where others would not,” VCBB Deputy Director Rob Fish said of the award.

“They’re building a sustainable network to serve Vermonters for decades to come.”

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).

Image

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.

Municipal finance is not for the weary.

But for the wise – at least according to the number-crunchers enmeshed in that world – one particular sliver of municipal finance (issuing bonds) has long been a viable way for local communities to finance the construction of municipal broadband networks. And as one Communication Union District in Vermont has discovered, bonding is better – when it’s rated.

Shining a light on bond-backed municipal broadband projects is the recent announcement that ECFiber, Vermont's first Communications Union District (CUD), obtained a BB rating from Standard & Poor Global, the nation’s preeminent credit rating agency. The rating will allow ECFiber to pay lower borrowing costs to complete a network expansion project.

Image

“This is a historic moment,” Stan Williams, ECFiber’s municipal finance advisor said in a prepared statement. “For the first time, a CUD will be issuing a rated bond, which means that many more investors will be competing to buy those bonds, lowering the interest rate. ECFiber has been managed for its entire existence to reach this goal. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this achievement.”

East Central Vermont Telecommunications District governing board chairman F. X. Flinn added that the new bond rating "was made possible by over 16 years of grass-roots persistence, driven by a conviction that working together, our region could overcome the failure of the marketplace to offer decent broadband to all our homes and businesses."

CVFiber continues to make progress in deploying affordable fiber to long-neglected rural areas in Vermont, as the state’s effort to embrace CUDs (Communications Union Districts) as a cornerstone of bridging the digital divide also pays dividends.

In late 2022 CVFiber broke ground on an ambitious plan to build a 1,200-mile fiber-optic network to bring affordable gigabit broadband access to 6,000 rural Vermont addresses deemed underserved by commercial broadband providers.

According to an October announcement by the CUD, its first customers have been connected in the central Vermont town of Calais, with construction ongoing in nearby Middlesex, East Montpelier, and Worcester.

Image

“We are enthusiastic about our progress as we bring high-speed Internet to central Vermont communities,” CVFiber Executive Director Jennille Smith said. “The progress that we have made and the impact that we’ve been able to achieve to date could not have been accomplished without the unwavering commitment from our partners. We are optimistic as we expand to other service areas.”

CUDs have proven to be a useful way for municipalities to band together to cooperatively build broadband projects that may have been financially and logistically impossible to try alone. Vermont CUDs can legally fund needed broadband expansions through debt, grants, and donations—but not taxes, though they themselves are tax-exempt nonprofits.  

CVFiber’s fiber deployment is expected to cost $60 million, $27 million of which is being paid for by federal grants made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The remaining cost is expected to be funded by network revenue, loans, and future grant opportunities.