Editor’s note: This article is by John Lippman, of the Valley News, in which it was first published Sept. 13, 2015.
[B]ridgewater Corners — Earlier this summer, Michel Guite, president of Vermont Telephone Co., pronounced that the government-funded program to build a fiber-optic system bringing super-fast Internet service to VTel’s 17,500 customers in its core telephone service area in southern Vermont was “done.”
The fiber project “is done, on time and on budget, pretty much as specified,” Guite said via email to the Valley News in July.
But by “done,” Guite apparently didn’t mean that all of VTel’s customers were connected to fiber-optic lines.
Despite deploying more than 1,200 miles of fiber-optic cable within its service area, thousands of VTel customers are still waiting to be connected to the high-speed Internet service that was promised them more than five years ago, according to people involved in the project. Most of those homes and businesses will not be connected before VTel’s funding awarded under a 2010 economic stimulus program administered by the federal Rural Utilities Service expires on Sept. 30 — and it could take as long as a year or two before all customers become connected, they said.
Longtime Bridgewater Corners resident Loretta Earle said VTel deployed its new fiber-optic cables past her home on Hale Hallow Road this past winter, but she remains unconnected. “I haven’t heard a word from them,” she said. “I called and asked them about it and they’d said they’d contact us when it’s ready.” Several of her relatives live nearby, she said, and “nobody’s connected.”
Guite did not respond to requests for comment.
VTel’s fiber-to-the-home system is half of a two-part broadband infrastructure project financed mostly by $130 million in federal grants and a loan that the company received more than five years ago to bring high-speed Internet service to every home and business in Vermont.
About $94 million of the money was budgeted toward building the fiber-to-the-home system to replace the company’s copper wire telephone system in 14 towns and villages across southern and central Vermont covering 15,614 census addresses, VTel has said.
The remaining $36 million is paying for VTel to build a network of 135 antenna sites around the state to provide high-speed wireless Internet access to 33,165 households that do not have Internet access. That part of the project is largely completed — although only 265 households had signed up for service as of the end of last year — with the exception of a handful of locations where erection of the antenna towers is being contested by local towns before the state’s Public Service Board.
The cost of the broadband project is even higher than $130 million when state grants and funds VTel received from Green Mountain Power for use of its wireless spectrum are included.
VTel also contributed radio spectrum licenses, which it valued at $30 million in capital, to the broadband wireless project.
Waiting in Bridgewater
Bridgewater is one of the towns where many homes and businesses remain unconnected, according to area residents and employees.
“We’ve been promised it for five years,” said Tony Duskiewicz, IT director at Long Trail Brewing Co. on Route 4 in Bridgewater Corners. The brewer still has not been hooked up, even though fiber-optic lines were run “from the pole to the building” last year, he said. The only thing that needs to be done is for technicians to “cut over” service from the telephone system’s old copper wires to the new fiber-optic lines, an on-site task that typically takes about two hours.
Duskiewicz said he’s left “numerous” voice mail messages with VTel, but he has yet to hear back from anyone at the company. “It’s gotten comical,” he said, noting that Long Trail long ago “maxed out” capacity with VTel’s DSL service and now subscribes to rival Comcast for high-speed Internet access.
A few miles away, Brian Bontrager, a contractor and member of the Bridgewater Planning Commission who lives on Broad Brook Road, also remains unconnected. “I’m still waiting,” he said, calling VTel’s hookups of homes to fiber-optic lines in town “very sporadic.” The only way to get connected is to call VTel every day, he suggested. “That’s what my neighbor did.”
His neighbor, Woodstock Union High School agriculture sciences teacher John Hiers, agreed. Hiers, who lives on Valley View Road across Route 100A from Bontrager’s place, was connected with fiber-optic lines in August.
“I think the only reason I have it is because I was persistent in calling and emailing,” he said.
In Hartland, where tensions ran high when Guite fought to relocate a historic cemetery on property where he plans to build a house, Town Manager Robert Stacey said VTel has “made tremendous progress” in connecting homes with fiber-optic lines. “I’ve not heard any complaints,” Stacey said.
Hiers and others in Bridgewater Corners who are connected with VTel’s fiber-to-the-home system express satisfaction with the high-speed Internet service. Kai Mayberger, owner of White Raven Drum Works on Route 4, where he handcrafts wooden drums, flutes and didjeridus, the Aboriginal Australian wind instrument also knows as didgeridoos, said he’s been connected for more than a year and describes the service as “awesome.”
“They are charging less than their competitor,” he said. “I have no complaints.”
Internet users in Hartland who are VTel customers also praise their new fiber-optic connections.
Daniel Cote, who operates an instrumentation business for inkjet printers out of his Pelham North Road home, described the difference between VTel’s DSL service and that provided over fiber-optic lines as “night and day.” His work involves downloading a lot of software, and with DSL “it was so painful to do anything.” But since getting hooked up to fiber-optic lines, Cote said, “there can be three to four of us online at the same time, kids doing research for (school) projects” with no degradation in downloading or streaming.
“I think people who aren’t connected (in Hartland) aren’t connected because they are happy with what they have,” he said.
VTel began construction of its fiber-to-the-home system in October 2011, 14 months after it won the government funding in August 2010. In April 2013, the company announced it had connected the first 500 customers and was connecting residences at the rate of 200 homes a week — which would allow it to connect all 17,500 customers in less than two years. By July 2013, 1,500 homes and business had been connected in Springfield, which VTel said it expected to double by year’s end.
VTel’s telephone system encompasses 14 communities spanning Windsor, Windham, Rutland and Bennington counties in southern Vermont. The company’s upgrade of its copper wire telephone lines to fiber-optic lines enables the delivery of Internet service at speeds of one gigabit per second — significantly faster than DSL or access over cable — and allows for easy downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows. The lowest-cost option for a combined VTel Internet and phone plan is $54.95 a month; if a customer wants only Internet service, it costs $5 more — $59.95 per month.
The fiber-optic upgrade additionally gave VTel the ability to offer television channels, so customers could bundle their phone, TV and Internet service into a single package similar to those offered by such media giants as Comcast and Time Warner. In June, VTel began offering a 10-gigabit plan, designed for customers who work from home and want a business-grade service, for $400 a month.
More Than 1,000 Unconnected
Exactly how many of VTel’s 17,500 residential and business customers remain unconnected to fiber-optic lines is unclear. But Susan Kay, president of Eustis Cable Enterprises, a Brookfield, Vt.-based company that is the chief contractor for switching VTel’s customers to fiber-optic lines, said “a few thousand would be very accurate,” and the number of unconnected homes “could be as high as 4,000.” She said none of VTel’s 14 exchanges is 100 percent converted to fiber-optic lines.
Eustis Cable has been VTel’s chief contractor on the “cut-overs,” the final step in activating fiber-optic service with a customer that involves running the fiber-optic cable from the pole to the residence or business, installing the proper equipment on the side of the building and setting up the converter boxes for television service. Kay said her company has activated fiber-optic service for more than 10,000 VTel customers over the past 2½ years. After a three-week hiatus while VTel “regrouped” to prepare for an end in government funding, Kay said, four of her crews are back doing fiber-optic installations.
“I’d say we’ve done about 95 percent” of all VTel’s customers that have been connected to date, she said.
One of the chief obstacles that VTel has faced in hooking up its customers to fiber-optic lines has been scheduling appointments with homeowners, according to a technician who has worked on the project.
“Just to find people at home is extremely difficult,” said David Rybacki, a project manager of Eustis Cable. “Every town has seasonal people in it,” which makes connecting them possible only at certain times of the year. And given an eight-hour shift and two hours allotted per hookup, that means a technician can connect, on average, only about four homes a day, Rybacki said.
Moreover, instead of deploying the fiber-optic line steadily along a single route, the unavailability of homeowners forces technicians to travel haphazardly from town to town and appointment to appointment, drawing out the connection process, Rybacki said.
VTel had to submit all of its invoices documenting expenditures to the Rural Utilities Service by June 30, and the government will cease disbursing funds by Sept. 30.
Under the terms of its grant and loan agreement with the federal government’s Rural Utilities Service, which awarded the stimulus funding, VTel is required to have its broadband projected completed by the Sept. 30 funding expiration date. However, the 36-page 2010 agreement does not address whether all customers must be connected with fiber optic lines for the infrastructure projected to be deemed completed.
“We expect VTel will meet the terms of their loan agreement,” a representative for the RUS said in an email statement, adding that “VTel reports that they are on track and in compliance with their loan agreement.”
“We will have a clearer picture of the status of all Recovery Act projects after Sept. 30,” the representative said, after awardees file their post-funding project status reports and RUS staff makes field inspections.
To build its fiber-to-the-home system, VTel contracted with a variety of engineering firms, equipment manufacturers and contractors to supply hardware and services: MasTec to string and trench fiber-optic lines; Calix for router boxes to transform the fiber-optic light pulses into Internet and phone signals; Alcatel-Lucent for switches and routers; Clearfield for its fiber-management platform; and Eustis Cable Enterprises for the final cut-overs to switch the customer from copper wire to fiber-optic access, among others.
A Call to Guite
In Danby, where residents have complained about waiting to get connected, Selectboard member Bill Gormley said VTel “got off to a tough start. I think they underestimated the terrain.” But VTel made progress in recent months and Gormley said he believes most residents in the town are now connected.
Gormley cites himself as a customer who took it into his own hands to get connected: He called VTel directly.
To Gormley’s astonishment, Guite, a former Wall Street security analyst who lives much of the year in Greenwich, Conn., picked up the call himself. “I got a direct to his desk. I don’t know how I did it. It was pure luck,” Gormley said.
“He asked me a lot of questions,” Gormley said. “Forty minutes later a truck pulls up and a guy gets out and says, ‘I don’t know who you know,’ ” and explains he’s been dispatched to get his fiber-optic line working.
“Within a couple of days I was up and running,” Gormley said.
