Ambitious Effort to Provide Broadband Is Launched in Valley

By M. D. Drysdale

Fourteen towns in the White River Valley area hope to create a regional fiber-optic network that would bring extremely high-speed internet service to homes and businesses even in remote locations.

A committee calling itself the East-Central Fiber Network or ECFibernet has been reaching out to towns throughout the area.

The goal is a non-profit utility that could bring telephone, cable TV, and broadband internet service to anyone who is already served by phone lines.

It is hoped that the first customers can be connected by summer of 2009.

A meeting was held in Tunbridge Monday with selectboard members and other representatives from towns. The towns who are currently part of ECFibernet, according to a news release, are Randolph, Williamstown, Chelsea, Braintree, Brookfield, Tunbridge, Vershire, Strafford, Thetford, Sharon, Royalton, Norwich, Barnard, and Pomfret.

Public meetings will be held through the fall and early winter to inform residents and officials in the area about fiber-optic technology and how it can be brought to the region. The first meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 15 at the Tunbridge Town Hall.

Selectboards are being encouraged to place a non-binding resolution supporting the project on their Town Meeting warnings next March.

Then, the work of creating the actual organization will occur.

Th ECFibernet committee has already approached powerful partners whose assistance, some members said, is the reason that such an ambitious project can be attempted.

A key, they said is the participation of Burlington Telecom, the municipal utility serving Burlington. As part of its infrastructure, Burlington Telecom had to build a "fiber hub," which has enormous capacity. Burlington uses only a small percentage of the fiber capacity of the hub, and the utility has offered use of their hub to other Vermont towns, saving them a large up-front investment.

The other partner is ValleyNet, a non-profit in the Upper Valley which was instrumental in bringing the original dial-up service to the area. It has sold its dial-up to Sovernet and now is willing to use its legal and organizational expertise to create ECFibernet, according to John Lutz, who is a Randolph representative on the ECFibernet committee.

Lutz noted that Randolph became involved after the "Creative Community" process early this year identified broadband service as one of the greatest needs in town. In exploring the issue, the Randolph committee, led by Joe Boyd, discovered that several towns in the area had been working on the issue for a couple of years.

Through the organizing work of Al and Laura Duey, managers for the Vermont Rural Broadband Project, an organization had formed in Tunbridge, Vershire, Chelsea, Royalton, and Thetford. Another formed in the Pomfret area, and it was that group that made the connection with Burlington Telecom.

Those results looked so promising that more work was undertaken with other towns to see if this entire area could form its own organization.

At the meeting in Tunbridge Monday, the organizers and interested townspeople found themselves extremely optimistic, Lutz said.

"It was like it was almost too good to be true," he commented.

Towns would not need to put up their own money or even to make available their bonding authority, he said. Commercial financing would likely be available at less than market rates to a non-profit, he said, and the high-profile bill passed in Montpelier this year might provide assistance through loan guarantees or other mechanisms.

The committee is adamant that if the project is to work at all, it must work for everyone in the area, according to Moderator Bob Merrill of Pomfret.

Service, he said, would extend to any place "as long as there is a pole within a reasonable distance. The important thing is that we are all in it for 100%"