You think that telephone pole outside is tall? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
In the not-very-distant future, phone poles in much of Vermont could be 10 feet higher. And that’s just the pole itself. According to legislation labored over in Senate committees this week, the various utility companies (telephone, cable, Internet, electricity) will be allowed to build 10-foot extensions atop the poles, and perhaps (this is open to interpretation) ten-foot extensions atop the extensions.
All to reach high-tech Nirvana, that Golden Age when high-speed Internet will (as the new governor pledged) reach “the last mile” of every dirt road; when wireless conversations flit flawlessly from one cell-phone caller to another no matter how many mountains lie between them; when a “smart meter” outside every house tells someone, somewhere, how much electricity the household is using, and for what.
And who knows what else about the goings-on within?
It’s the new world — perhaps brave, perhaps not — envisioned by Senate bill 78, backed by Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration (though not necessarily in every particular), sponsored by all five members of the Committee on Economic Development, and likely to pass (though not without amendment).
It’s a 65-page bill replete with complex tech talk and governmental jargon, but its basic thrust is simple. It would direct state agencies to co-ordinate and cooperate with the high-tech communications firms. It would centralize, accelerate, and soften the regulatory system to make it easier for firms to get permission to put up those phone poles and other contraptions. As is now the case, local zoning and other land use restrictions would be pre-empted by state standards for telecommunications facilities until 2014.
There’s no mystery about the legislation’s likely success. It calls for spending almost no state money in order to achieve a goal almost everybody favors — high speed Internet and reliable cell phone service for all. Not that this transformation won’t cost money, but most of it is already on hand, and without burdening the State Treasury. It’s federal money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), popularly known as the stimulus.
All that “free” money has soothed some of the passions that might have been ignited by such complex and far-reaching legislation. But it has also inflamed others. That’s because all the players want in on the action, and some of them are not happy about how it has been distributed.
Most of these clashes are just business. At least one is personal.
There are also philosophical reservations on the part of some lawmakers, notably Sen. Mark MacDonald of Williamstown, who compared the entire exercise to the 19th century federal railroad subsidies.
“Who’s going to benefit?” MacDonald asked. “Federal tax monies are being used to build (communications systems) and the owners can charge anything they want. We’re creating robber barons.”
That’s one interpretation, but there’s no doubt that the bill — by easing and speeding up the expansion of broadband and wireless systems — is going to benefit some companies. There’s also no doubt that in the process, the state and federal government have already started to choose which companies will benefit most, and that these choices have not pleased everyone.
So far, according to information in the bill itself, Vermont has gotten six ARRA broadband project awards, the biggest of which is an $81.66 million grant and $35.16 million loan to Vermont Telephone Company (VTel) which has promised to provide “near universal (wireless broadband) coverage in Vermont.”
VTel is a privately-held, family-owned company based in Springfield. It is controlled by J. Michel Guité, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., but who, along with his wife and children, have given more than $72,000 to Vermont candidates and political committees in the last five years, according to state and federal records. Of late, more Guité donations have gone to Democrats, though the family supported former President George W. Bush and former Gov. Jim Douglas.
Another big ARRA grant was $33.4 million to Vermont FiberConnect, a public-private partnership between the Vermont Telecommunications Authority and Sovernet Communications, a subsidiary of Atlantic Tele-Network, to build 770 miles of high-speed Internet connections, and here’s where matters start to get personal.
Key to the Sovernet-VTA link was a $2 million grant from the public authority to the private company, a grant apparently determined by the VTA board in an executive session at which no minutes were recorded. Both the grant and the process were attacked by Sen.Vincent Illuzzi, the Derby Republican who is the chief sponsor of the bill, who said that because of the grant to Sovernet, “all other telecom providers now see the VTA as a competitor.”
VTA officials responded angrily, one asserting that Illuzzi needed to be “educated” about telecommunications, another suggesting that he has a conflict of interest because he owns two cell phone towers in the Northeast Kingdom.
Illuzzi has never made any effort to hide his telecommunications holdings and he asked Senate Secretary John Bloomer to determine whether there were any conflict of interest complications. Bloomer said that at Illuzzi’s request he visited the Government Operations Committee, explained the conflict of interest rules, and told them, “I don’t think there’s a problem based on what I know.”
(Not that Illuzzi never tries to use his legislative skills for his own ends. According to Karen Marshall, the governor’s coordinator for telecommunications development, an early draft of the bill included a small section repealing the Shumlin administration’s recent decision to ban recreational vehicles from state land).
At any rate, the legislation does not seem to provide any direct benefit to Illuzzi’s tower holdings. If anything, it might provide a boost to potential competitors.
As written, the bill grants all telecom operators — from independents such as Illuzzi to giants like VTel and Fairpoint — broad exemptions from existing environmental regulations. Some of those, though, are not likely to stay in the legislation. Sen. Ginny Lyons, chair of the Natural Resources Committee, said her committee was likely to remove some provisions relating to stormwater rules and other land use restrictions.
But the Senate Finance Committee did not seem to object to the portions of the bill severely reducing VTA’s scope and authority. Illuzzi told the committee that though there was a “large question” about whether the state still needed VTA, he and the other members of his committee had decided not to eliminate it, but to curtail its powers.
As it wends its way through the legislative process, the bill might be altered to meet some other objections. One comes from civil libertarians concerned, in the words of Vermont ACLU chief Allen Gilbert, that the “smart meters” to be attached to everyone’s home might give police “access to learn about what may be occurring inside people’s homes… or when people come and go.” Gilbert said the ACLU has “suggested language for a bill that would protect consumers’ privacy.”
Matt Levin, of Vermonters for a Clean Environment said some health experts also worry that the wireless technology of the smart meters could endanger people with certain health conditions or medical implants. These people should have the option of getting a hard-wired meter, or having none at all, he said.
Others are simply skeptical that the bill can deliver the Nirvana it envisions. After all, the previous governor also promised to get the whole state hooked up with the high-speed Internet. He was no doubt sincere. He was not successful. Rep. Ernie Shand, a Weathersfield Democrat, with experience in the telephone business, said he doesn’t think the Senate bill gives sufficient protection to the “legacy phone companies,” the kind that deliver their services by wire. Shand said he is not convinced that, even with the encouragement of the new legislation, reliable wireless service will get to “Mrs. Murphy” who lives at the end of a country road and who may have health problems. The traditional phone, he said remains “the carrier of the last resort.”
Karen Marshall, believer in the new technology though she is, said she understood the skepticism, especially in hilly Vermont. “We’re not in Kansas,” she said.
Rep. Sam Young, the tech-savvy freshman Democrat from West Glover, said that while “we always have a lot of kinks to work out,” he thought the state and its private telecom companies could get everyone wired. Previous efforts, he said, weren’t well-funded. This one is, he said, and VTel has a “top of the line 4G network” and enough wave length capacity to do the job, assuming it has enough manpower.
Marshall said that the bill’s passage, which she considers likely, will end neither the process or the discussion, and probably disagreement, over telecommunications.
“It’s not as though in 2013 the infrastructure stops improving or building,” she said. That’s one reason this year’s bill doesn’t have to create a perfect system, if there is such a thing. Some critics, for instance, say a universal hard-wired system is better than connecting everyone through wireless technology. That’s probably true, according to both Young and Marshall, but universal, or even near-universal reliable wireless phone and Internet connection would still be a major improvement, and most likely the foundation of a stronger economy.
The bill’s progress can be followed via the Legislature’s website. Or just keep checking the height of the nearest phone pole.
