[T]he House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development unanimously voted out a bill Wednesday that changes the state’s regulatory structure for Internet services.
In its current version, H.117 puts the responsibility for regulating Internet access and providing broadband to rural customers into the hands of the Department of Public Service.
The bill creates a Division of Telecommunications and Connectivity, which would mean an expansion of up to three staff members in the department’s telecom division. The proposed system would replace the existing Vermont Telecommunications Authority.
As part of the bill, a 10-person Connectivity Board would act as an advisory committee to the DPS commissioner, who then would have the final word on how to allocate grants from the Connectivity Initiative to Internet service providers.
The commissioner can award the money, which comes from Vermont’s universal service fund fee on cellphone and landline bills, to subsidize companies that otherwise might not find it profitable to build broadband infrastructure to reach a rural customer.
The Connectivity Board would have the power to designate telecommunications carriers for high-cost areas, which can receive funding to provide Internet services with speeds no lower than 4 Mbps (megabits per second) for downloading and 1 Mbps for uploading.
According to Jim Porter, the department’s senior policy and telecommunications director, only 71 percent of Vermont households have access to broadband – which he and the Federal Communications Commission define as a minimum of 25 Mbps for downloading and 3 Mbps for uploading.
Porter said that some of the remaining 29 percent of Vermont addresses will gain access to faster Internet services through funding from the FCC. That leaves a gap of some 28,000 addresses in the state without sufficient Internet speed of 4/1 Mbps.
Under the bill, the department would use the Connectivity Initiative to bring those customers’ Internet speeds up to a minimum of 10 Mbps for downloading and 1 Mbps for uploading (10/1).
That can be a significant upgrade for a rural customer, but the bill’s sponsors say it’s only a step in the right direction.
“10/1 is now pretty much the bottom,” said Rep. Steve Carr, D-Brandon, a co-sponsor of the bill. “Everybody wants 100/100 synchronous, and that’s not going to be until the day we have fiber,” he said referring to high-speed fiber optic cable.
Rep. Sam Young, D-Glover, a self-described “computer geek,” said he co-sponsored the bill to start a discussion on rural broadband access, but the state won’t see the benefits he wants until it lays fiber lines.
“The phone companies are losing money, and they can’t invest in bringing broadband to rural areas,” Young said of the Connectivity Initiative. “You really have to invest public money to make this happen.”
Young called broadband “the economic driver of the future,” and said he is disappointed that funding for connectivity, through last year’s increase in the universal service fee, is in the $1 million range.
“The towns that don’t have Internet – they can’t sell their houses, and their schools are dying,” Young said. “It’s all connected.”
The purposes of the new connectivity division and the board would be to take over duties that the Vermont Telecommunications Authority has held since 2007, according to Rep. Bill Botzow, D-Bennington, chair of the committee.
If a bill doesn’t pass by the end of the session, Botzow said, duties for the Vermont Telecommunications Authority would automatically go to the Secretary of Administration when the authority disbands later this year.
Botzow said the public would be best served by a group of experts who sit on a board and advise the Department of Public Service.
The bill next moves to the House Ways and Means Committee.
