On some days, Steven John leaves his home in Marlboro to drive into town where he parks in front of the elementary school, opens his laptop and gets to work. His connection at home is so weak that he and his wife take turns going into town, where they can connect to public internet.
Marlboro is just one of the towns in Windham County with big gaps in internet connectivity that have left many in rural Vermont behind. Lawmakers estimate that 60,000 addresses in the state have no access to decent internet.
That isn’t a new problem, but it’s become acute during the pandemic, when remote work, online education, and telehealth have become essential. They all rely on an internet connection.
“People who are telecommuting, working from home, they can’t survive on this kind of bandwidth,” John told VTDigger over a crackly telephone connection. He was speaking on a landline. There is no cellphone service at his house.
Last May, Marlboro joined five other towns in forming the Deerfield Valley Communication Union District, also called the DV CUD. John is the vice chair. The district’s goal is to provide access to internet to all district residents, “regardless of economic means,” John said.
Since the DV CUD formed in May, 14 other towns in the region have joined.
With a population of just over 1,000, Marlboro has among the poorest internet service in the state. Down the road in Halifax, it’s even worse, John said.
“Only 10% of the people in Marlboro have band connection to fiber or through wireless internet connection that is higher than 25-3,” John said.
25-3 is the slowest speed of internet that qualifies as broadband, according to standards set by the Federal Communications Commission. That level of connectivity allows for 25 megabytes per second to be downloaded, and just 3 megabytes per second to be uploaded.
But John said that in Marlboro, while residents are paying for that speed, in reality their internet is often slower.
“The thing that is annoying is that, from the state’s point of view, we’re getting 25-3 but nobody in Marlboro is getting 25-3 that I know of, even though we’re paying for it,” John said. “On a good day, I average in the mid-teens and the most I ever get is 2 up.”
A broader problem
The southern part of the state isn’t the only region that’s trying to address connectivity issues. CUDs have been popping up around the state this past year, and they now form a patchwork across the state.
Before Town Meeting Day of 2020, there were only two CUDs in existence. Now, there are 11 CUDs in Vermont, as towns turn to public options to provide coverage of areas that the private sector has passed over.
But forming a CUD is only the first step in the lengthy and expensive process of providing access to broadband. Of the 11 CUDs, only two currently provide internet to Vermonters. The others are still planning, and then they’ll have to raise money to pay for the fiber they hope to run up even the most remote back roads.
A law from 2015 enables two or more towns to join together, working as municipalities to build communications infrastructure.
Christine Hallquist, administrator of the Northeast Kingdom’s CUD, said that even beyond Vermont, “this is really an American problem.”
Hallquist said she made connectivity a cornerstone of her economic policies in her 2018 campaign for governor.
“Our country has never made the investment, like we did with electric utilities,” Hallquist said. Areas with 20 homes per mile would be profitable, but in the Northeast Kingdom, there are only around 12 homes per mile on average.
“There are areas that aren’t ever going to make money. Somehow we have to get to those areas,” Hallquist said.
Hallquist said CUDs with only five or six towns could be too small to gather the financial resources needed to build out telecommunications.
“We’ve got a bunch of passionate volunteers, but no resources,” Hallquist said.
A surge in the Statehouse
Because of the pandemic, the push for better broadband service has mushroomed.
Gov. Phil Scott set aside $20 million in his budget proposal to increase access to broadband. House Speaker Jill Krowinski has been a vocal supporter of legislative efforts to increase broadband. And a bill being drafted in the Legislature seeks to provide broadband speed of 100-100 to all Vermonters.
Rep. Tim Briglin, D-Thetford, has been working on that committee bill, which would invest money and resources in the efforts and determine exactly how the government would work with other entities in the state, such as communication union districts.
The past 10 months of living in a pandemic have made “crystal clear how critical this service is for people,” said Briglin, chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee.
“What the governor has put forward is a really helpful place to start,” Briglin said, but “I’m hopeful we can do more than that.”
Briglin wants to expand a lending program started a few years ago through the Vermont Economic Development Authority.
“I think we’ve got a shot at putting a significant amount of money against this problem this year,” Briglin said, particularly if the federal government appropriates more coronavirus aid.
The state has a statutory goal of 100% broadband coverage by 2024, but “we haven’t accomplished that mission in the last 10 years, relying on the private market providers,” Briglin said.
Communications union districts will likely play a big role in reaching the last 20% to 25% of Vermonters without adequate internet. In the absence of other solutions, districts are being formed to provide service to hard-to-reach places that aren’t going to provide a big return on investment.
Private companies aren’t keen to run high-capacity fiber to all rural areas because the scant number of customers can’t provide a healthy return on the investment.
Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-West Dover, said the gaps in coverage are “a failure of market policy, to provide critical infrastructure to every Vermonter to ensure that every Vermonter can call for help, can participate in the economy, can participate in education, in government, and in public safety.” Sibilia is vice chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee.
How long must they wait?
Residents of rural Vermont have heard this song before.
“How far back can we go with governors promising that we would have broadband accessible to all Vermonters, and we’re still struggling,” said Scott Tucker, the town manager of Wilmington, which has also joined the Deerfield Valley CUD.
“Going back 20 to 25 years, I remember different governors saying we should have it. It’s still not here,” he said.
Tucker says broadband would be an important economic driver for the town, but progress is slow.
“It’s not like it’s going gangbusters,” he said. He uses a hotspot on his iPhone for an internet connection at home. He lives close to the center of town, so he could get cable, but he prefers to pay one bill instead of two. Not everyone has that option, though, because there are places without cellphone service.
As in Marlboro, people in Wilmington come into town from the surrounding hills to get connected to the internet.
“At least during the warmer months, they’d sit in the car near the library, trying to gain access through computers,” Tucker said. “I don’t know what the solution is. Usually, it’s money,” he said.
Steven John, vice chair of the Deerfield Valley CUD, said that, according to the feasibility study and business plan the CUD has put together, the cost is around $3 million per town. For all 20 towns, the total could be $30 million to $50 million. To cover all the gaps everywhere in the state, he estimated the cost at a “couple of hundred million.”
If the state gets an infusion of federal money, it will be in the tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions. But Briglin said there’s a limit to how much can be spent per year on the projects, which take time to complete.
“We are putting our heads down and trying to plow ahead to solve an issue that this state has had for a couple of decades now,” Briglin said. “This service is absolutely required to operate, not just in the pandemic, but in the modern world. People are educating themselves from home, people are accessing health care from home, people are working from home.
“You have to have broadband service,” he said.
