Granville Gets It!

The ECFiber.net project faces two important milestones. The first is asking the residents of the 24 towns in our region that have expressed interest, to approve (on Town Meeting day) joining a new Interlocal Agency to carry out the project of bringing high-speed internet, TV, and phone to our region. This will be a self-funding and sustaining effort with no funds or bonding required from the participating towns.

The second thing residents can do is go on-line to: http://
www.ecfiber.netand click on the "pre-register" link. This non-binding expression of interest will be of great importance as negotiations take place with future lessors of this new fiber-optic network. The more advance interest ECFiber.net can show, the better the financial terms of the network lease are likely to be. This pre-registration link has been active for several months and below are the numbers of pre-registered households as of February 15:

ECFiber # Pre- Percent

Town Reg. Total Reg.

Barnard 50 383 13%

Bethel 58 553 10%

Braintree 16 482 3%

Brookfield 10 817 1%

Chelsea 81 495 16%

Granville 42 127 33%

Hancock 3 164 2%

Hartford 60 4,509 1%

Montpelier 6 3,739 0%

Norwich 77 1,248 6%

Pomfret 43 404 11%

Randolph 42 1,822 2%

Reading 1 286 0%

Rochester 16 511 3%

Royalton 28 1,155 2%

Sharon 46 278 17%

Stockbridge 44 281 16%

Strafford 100 420 24%

Thetford 215 1,367 16%

Tunbridge 49 513 10%

West Windsor 28 456 6%

Williamstown 57 1,769 3%

Windsor 6 1,520 0%

Woodstock 41 1,350 3%

Total, 2/15/08 1119 24,649 5%

From the 24 target towns, with a total of 24,649 potential households, 1,119 people already completed the on-line signup of interest. This represents 5% of the total number of households.

However, special recognition has to go to Granville, Vermont! With a total of 127 possible households, 42 have already expressed an interest in ECFiber.net --33% of all households. Congratulations, Granville gets it.

John Lutz

Randolph

____________