Claudia Harris and her husband, John Wiley Jr., are members of what they say is the last all-volunteer, non-billing ambulance service in Vermont. The work requires that they undergo continuous training.
But because their Landgrove home has an early and relatively slow form of broadband called digital subscriber line, or DSL, which uses telephone land lines, training became a challenge when their courses moved online during the first months of the pandemic. They periodically lost their connection.
“During those early days of the pandemic, we were trying to learn how to provide health care to our neighbors, and we had a really hard time Zooming,” said Harris.
Harris has a pole on her property that offers fiber because a neighbor ordered a business line, but Harris said she cannot access it without paying the provider, Consolidated Communications, hundreds of dollars a month.
Harris and her husband are not alone. Their frustrations are shared by others in Landgrove who spoke to VTDigger, reflecting the challenges of many Vermonters who live in rural towns with the least access to high-speed internet. And they could be waiting for a while before getting faster service.
Vermont is counting on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for an ambitious plan to bring fiber optic service to every home on the electric grid within five years. But Christine Hallquist, whom Gov. Phil Scott appointed last year to oversee the delivery of that service, told VTDigger last week that inflation and supply-chain problems could slow the project.
“We’ve got a lot of funding,” Hallquist said. “Do we have enough? That is quite questionable. Probably not likely with the inflation that’s happening.”
Hallquist, the executive director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, said it would probably cost the state more than $1 billion to connect every home to fiber, so the state is counting on private telecommunications providers to take care of all the homes that already have cable.
“We believe those will ultimately get connected by fiber, and that allows us to focus on the underserved and unserved areas,” Hallquist said.
For the largely rural regions of the state without access to high-speed internet, Vermont is relying on a strategy of allowing municipalities to band together into communications union districts, or CUDs, to build fiber optic service.
Hallquist said that, last August, she estimated it would cost $550 million to connect every Vermont home without a reliable high-speed connection to fiber optic service. She said the board wanted to provide the communications union districts with 60 percent of the total cost of building out fiber networks, or $345 million in grants — if that estimate held. The districts could then go to the bond markets to borrow the rest.
But Hallquist expects that number to continue to rise due to nationwide competition for labor and materials.
Even last year’s $550 million estimate far exceeded the $362 million to $439 million the Vermont 10-year Telecom Plan, also published last year, estimated it would cost to connect those homes. Hallquist noted that estimate was based on 2020 calculations.
“Costs have risen and we now have a more accurate estimate,” Hallquist said. “Our revised numbers are based on the current quotes that we are receiving with more detailed business plans provided by the CUDs.”
The cost of materials, Hallquist said, is increasing the likely cost of building out fiber. She noted that every other state is competing for materials to build out its broadband network now that federal funding is available from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — both signed into law last year by President Joe Biden.
Hallquist said supply-chain problems could also delay Vermont’s ability to complete the buildout in five years. She said wait times for some materials are now one year. She added that the board has pre-purchased some of those materials and said it is working with the communications union districts to identify how long the wait time is for every part.
“One bolt can hold up the whole thing,” she said.
Labor is critical as well, Hallquist said, predicting Vermont will need an additional 216 fiber technicians to meet a five-year construction schedule.
In December and January, the board issued about $22 million in pre-construction funds to perform detailed design, Hallquist said, noting that the design would tackle a key question: “How are we going to get to every address?”
Robert Fish, deputy director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, said Consolidated Communications alone is planning to offer fiber optic service to 200,000 Vermont homes that already have cable.
Fish cited figures from the state’s Department of Public Service that show 64,000 Vermont homes do not have access to a reliable wireline connection that can achieve 100 megabytes per second of download and upload. Fish said these are the addresses that the board seeks to connect to fiber optic service through grants.
Anticipating inflation, the board facilitated the pre-purchase of about 2,000 miles of fiber optic cable last year, Fish said. The first order arrived in East Montpelier last Thursday.
“We’re ahead of most states now,” Fish said.
As of Jan. 26, according to a map produced by the community broadband board, 206 Vermont municipalities, covering 64 percent of Vermont’s population and 91 percent of unserved locations, had joined a communications union district.
“Most of the remaining towns have a great deal of cable or are well served by their existing provider,” Fish said.
Hallquist said individual towns not in a communications union district can apply for grants through the state if they partner with an existing broadband provider.
“Those towns are also likely not to get as good a deal as a communications union district,” Fish said. “Providers would much rather work with 20 to 50 towns working together than one town at a time.”
Communications union districts have no power to tax. They can only fund themselves by applying for grants or by borrowing money.
Fish said that of the nine communications union districts created so far, he expects seven to do some construction this year. Earlier this month, Fish said, the board authorized such districts to buy materials that are now taking a long time to obtain. Last week, it awarded NEK Broadband, the Northeast Kingdom district, an additional $1.3 million, and Maple Broadband, a district of 20 municipalities in Addison County, an additional $781,284, to make sure they could begin construction this summer or fall.
Fish said that on Monday, the board would consider providing a $421,000 construction grant for WCVT in Bolton, an additional $15.9 million for NEK Broadband and, tentatively, an additional $11.2 million for Maple Broadband.
He said the board received $150 million in federal funds last year from Act 71. And it’s expecting $95 million in the state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Act 71 is a $150 million broadband package approved by the Legislature last year. The law used federal money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to fund preconstruction and construction projects by the state’s Communications Union Districts. It also established the Vermont Community Broadband Board.
“Vermont is actually leading the nation in terms of the work,” Hallquist said. “‘And it’s because the Legislature set up these communications union districts.”
Two districts are ahead of the rest and are already providing service. ECFiber, a district that includes 30 towns in the Upper Valley and more than 5,000 customers, has been operational for more than 10 years, Fish said. NEK Broadband brought its first project, covering Concord and a portion of Lunenburg, online in January, he noted.
The Concord and Lunenburg project was largely funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Will Anderson, program coordinator for the Vermont Communications Union Districts Association.
Maple Broadband, CVFiber in Central Vermont, and DVFiber in the Deerfield Valley, have agreements with private partners to design, build and operate networks and are awaiting grants as they also try to obtain materials and sign labor contracts.
The Northwest CUD and the Lamoille CUD are planning to partner with Google Fiber and are expecting to start construction this year, according to Anderson. He said they are a little bit behind the first five districts.
The two districts that are probably farthest behind are in southwestern Vermont, Anderson said. They are Otter Creek in Rutland County and Southern Vermont CUD in Bennington County. Anderson said they got started later but are making progress.
“Southern Vermont definitely faces some of the greatest challenges of any CUD,” Anderson said. “They have a large quantity of cable internet service existing already, which makes it difficult to sell the idea of a fiber network to potential partners. So this has been a complication for them.”
But the chair of the Southern Vermont Communications Union District, Eric Hatch, is optimistic.
“The goal of our CUD is really to be the first to finish and have the most fibered CUD in the state,” he said.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently denied the Southern Vermont Communications Union District an $8.1 million grant to buy fiber. Hatch said the agency did not explain why Southern Vermont did not get the grant. The agency’s website only lists winning grants. Plan B, he said, is to get funding from the state.
Hatch said the district is working with its private partner, Consolidated Communications, to get everyone in the district’s 12 towns connected by 2024. Hatch said the company is planning to invest $6 million of its own money. He said trucks in Bennington and Shaftsbury are already rolling fiber optic wire out to telephone poles. Consolidated Communications already has fiber for the next two years of the Southern Vermont project, as well as the labor, he added.
According to Hatch, the company will have connected 400 of the district’s 2,500 underserved and unserved homes by the end of this year with its own capital. The communications union district, he said, will fund the connection of most of the remaining 2,100 homes next year, with the 100 most remote homes possibly having to wait until 2024.
In coming weeks, the district plans to publish a list of all the homes in the district indicating when they can expect to be connected to fiber optic service, Hatch said, noting that low-income homes may only need to pay $20 a month for fiber optic service.
For Claudia Harris, the rural Landgrove emergency services volunteer, it likely means at least another year-and-a-half of waiting for broadband.
“I’ve heard it before and won’t believe it until I see it,” Harris said.