The first complete overhaul of the state’s telecommunications plan in 10 years will focus on speed, access and pricing, state officials say.
Public hearings on Vermont’s first comprehensive revision since 2004 will start soon after the new year and a plan should emerge in March.
Telecommunications director Jim Porter said one of his primary goals is to “speed up” the definition of high-speed broadband Internet service, from the state’s current floor of 768 Kbps (kilobits per second) download and 200 Kbps upload to the new federal standard of 4 Mbps (megabits per second) down and 1 Mbps up.
In 1992, when the Legislature mandated that the department develop a forward-looking telecommunications plan, “TouchTone” features on land-based telephone lines rose to the upper tier of issues to be mediated. Given the “rapidly evolving” advances in voice communications at the time, lawmakers required the plan to be updated every three years going forward.
The document has taken different forms since then — sometimes released in sections and often on variable cycles.
Meanwhile, the industry has been virtually remade by technological advances, major utilities sales, wide-scale unplugging of landlines, rapid Internet adoption and complex federal regulatory changes.
Porter said he intends to reflect those changes in the new plan.
“What I intend the telecom plan to be in March is a compilation of all the data illustrating the extraordinary few years we’ve had,” Porter said. “And I think it’s going to be very interesting to compare and contrast to the 2004 plan. I think the 10-year benchmark there is going to be kind of remarkable.”
About $175 million of federal and state funds have poured into the state’s broadband infrastructure, thanks to broadband-based federal stimulus money and Gov. Peter Shumlin’s promise to connect all of Vermont by the end of 2013. Millions more in private funds have been invested by telecommunications firms.
To date, that’s brought Internet options to all but 3,000 homes in the state — at least 75 percent of them with moderate 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, according to state officials. A 2010 drive test of cellular coverage yielded a success rate in the 90 percent rage, but with “drop zones” and unserved corridors spanning anywhere from the distance between two interstate exits to the entire length of Essex County.
Going with it
When Porter took his position in 2011, Public Service Department staff had recently completed an update that focused mostly on broadband access. It left out topics such as Internet pricing, cable television access or phone service quality, for example.
“It was sitting on the desk when we got here, if you will. I think we had to publish the plan,” Porter said.
Rather than continue a piecemeal approach, Porter said he wants to produce one comprehensive assessment of all aspects of telecommunications, “in one bound volume,” he said. He expects the 2014 plan will tie together several pieces that have been published separately since 2011, such as audits of the universal service fund, which aims to equalize communications access and affordability between rural and urban areas.
Porter also plans to update a document that hasn’t been refreshed since 2009: a statewide telecommunications “almanac,” an inventory of telecommunications infrastructure, access and pricing.
The department had planned to release a version in 2011, but it languished during a lapse in staffing, Porter said. By the time it got to a new employee’s desk, the data had become so outdated that he decided to start over.
Porter declined to comment on planning priorities before his time at the Public Service Department, but said one thing was clear: “In January of 2011, everybody involved in this effort could not have taken the broadband commitment of 100 percent access more seriously.”
Deborah Shannon, telecommunications policy analyst at the department from 2007 to 2010, said the focus on broadband was a reflection of both demand and funding at the time.
“There were a lot of vocal individuals, both in the Legislature and in the business community and in all of Vermont’s nooks and crannies, talking about broadband,” Shannon said.
At the same time, budget pressures restricted what the department could accomplish. In addition to staffing cuts after the 2008 economic crash, she said, staff devoted enormous resources to the FairPoint bankruptcy.
Shannon also said she advised then-PSD commissioner David O’Brien that rapid changes in the industry would make it hard to produce all-encompassing plans on a regular basis. By the time the work is complete, much of the technology it explores is obsolete, she said.
Progress without plan
Porter acknowledged the telecommunications planning of recent years doesn’t look much like the plans of 2004 and earlier. But just because it’s not written down in one place, that doesn’t mean the work isn’t getting done, he said.
Chris Campbell, executive director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority and formerly telecommunications director from 2005 to 2010, said the missing “plans” don’t indicate a lack of priority.
“To the contrary, many of the items that were in the 2004 plan, the priority became the implementation of those issues,” Campbell said. “It actually was a situation where work was started, then there was wave after wave after wave of external factors that had very significant changes on the landscape in terms of what you were planning for and what you were shooting for.”
Porter notes that changes to regulatory jurisdiction are some of the most significant changes.
He said the telecom plan was conceived at a time when the industry was dominated by phone companies, over which states had strong regulatory authority. But the broadband and cellular services consumers are flocking to are outside the state’s jurisdiction, he said.
In some regards, therefore, Porter views the telecom planning document as “largely aspirational.”
He said his office is looping the Agency of Commerce and Community Development into more conversations with telecom companies, in order to leverage the agency’s standing relationships with providers long considered the backbone of economic development.
CORRECTION: This article was corrected on Dec. 18, 2013. The state’s broadband floor is currently 768 Kbps (kilobits per second) download and 200 Kbps upload. The new federal standard is 4 Mbps (megabits per second) down and 1 Mbps up.
