[A]dvocates of municipal broadband say bringing high-speed Internet to rural areas would improve the state’s economy.
But bringing broadband to underserved areas such as Orange and Windsor counties would require the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development to revive three bills that are currently on hold.
The committee’s highest priority right now is an economic development bill that must be merged with the Senate version of the jobs bill, S.138.
Three bills related to building out fiber-optic cable — H.224, H.352, and H.353 — are on the committee’s “maybe” list, said Rep. Bill Botzow, D-Bennington.
Universal broadband advocates who represent towns that are part of the municipal broadband entity ECFiber are lobbying lawmakers to take up the legislation.
Paul Haskell, a delegate for the town of Sharon on the ECFiber board, said Wednesday he began advocating for a fiber buildout in his county when he found out that children had much better technology in school than at home.
“We’re just a huge, underserved region, but we have a lot of kids who can’t do their homework,” said CJ Stumpf of East Randolph. Stumpf said a child in her town was issued an iPad at school and used it as a paperweight at home because he had no Internet access.
Haskell says he pays $99 per month for broadband speeds of 20 mbps for uploading and downloading through ECFiber. That high-speed service is several times faster than DSL service and enables him to set up a repeater in his living room to receive cellphone signals through the Internet.
Two of the one-page bills in front of House Commerce, H.224 and H.352, are designed to make it easier for Internet providers to install fiber-optic cable on existing utility poles.
H.224 would streamline the permitting process for Internet providers and phone companies who want to put cables and conduits on utility poles.
According to Corey Chase, a telecom infrastructure specialist at the Department of Public Service, the process involves bringing different companies together to determine how to get the new entity on the pole. Existing cables might have to be moved around, or engineers might need to stabilize a pole, in a “make-ready” process.
“If someone, the person trying to attach, if they think it’s taken too long, then they can go to the Public Service Board, and they can ask the Public Service Board to help them,” said Jim Porter, senior policy and telecommunications director for the Department of Public Service.
H.352 would go a little further. The bill would direct the Public Service Board to write rules that give recourse to an attaching company if the owner of the utility pole doesn’t complete the process to prepare the pole within a timely manner.
“That’s the problem I hear from providers is that the make-ready work takes too long, and if you do take it to the Public Service Board they can take up to 180 days to make a decision,” Porter said.
Porter did not endorse either bill, but said the board might be able to provide recourse without passing any new laws. Chase said the department wants to give new companies “reasonable access to the poles” without making those companies spend all their time serving the new attaching companies.
The third bill on the House Commerce wall, H.353, would put municipal broadband providers into “telecommunications union districts.” That might entice investors on Wall Street to put money into entities such as ECFiber, according to Haskell. Right now, 24 member towns are involved in an “inter-local contract” that makes up ECFiber.
Botzow, chair of House Commerce, said his primary focus is improving the effectiveness of workforce training. Companies complain that workers aren’t adequately trained for vacant positions.
“In no way am I disinterested in any of them [the broadband bills], but the committee has asked us to look at other things first,” Botzow said.
House Commerce just finished taking testimony Wednesday on 60 pages of legislation related to contract laws, and it passed a bill weeks ago to make it easier for limited liability companies to form in Vermont.