What is ECFiber?

The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network (ECFiber) is legally-constituted as a municipality through an InterLocal Contract (ILC) pursuant to Vermont Law.  It has a Governing Board consisting of one delegate and one alternate delegate appointed by the Select Boards or City Council in each of the 22 member towns and one city (Montpelier). The Governing Board adopted by-laws and has elected an Executive Committee and officers to carry out the normal business between the regular monthly Governing Board meetings.

Why is this project important?

Vibrant and sustainable communities need true high-speed broadband in order to participate fully and effectively in education, business, health care and other fundamental activities.  Unfortunately, the United States is far behind other countries in providing ubiquitous broadband access. South Korea, Sweden, Japan, France, Finland, Australia and even Slovakia are significantly ahead of the US. Within the US, rural areas like central Vermont, so called broadband coverage is often slow, unreliable, or obsolete. if available at all.

As our jobs, entertainment, politics, social networking and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind.

A universally available service based on state-of-the-art optical fiber would provide far superior performance at lower cost than that provided by any other system. This would dramatically effect the lives of residents, governments, and organizations, and would make region more attractive to high-tech industries and the home-based businesses on which the Upper Valley's economy increasingly relies for jobs and economic prosperity.

Our school systems would be clear beneficiaries. Only fiber-optic networks have the capacity to be upgraded continually and efficiently at reasonable cost in response to increasing demand for bandwidth. Linking multiple schools with a fiber-optic network allows them to offer specialty interactive classes in “real time”, such as music, foreign languages, advanced mathematics, that might otherwise be cost-prohibitive for a single school. 

Another increasingly popular internet use is online face-to-face healthcare, in combination with with integrated internet- enabled diagnostic devices. This reduces the need for travel to medical providers, and keeps older adults living independently longer. Business video conferencing and logging on to the corporate LAN from home is already essential for many people who telecommute.

Why fiber?

Optical fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) provides the best, most economic, and most "future proof" technology available. It can easily be upgraded almost infinitely to meet rapidly rising demands for speed, capacity and reliability. Optical glass fiber has a virtually infinite capacity. Glass fiber is also extremely stable, resistant to corrosion, durable, and long-lived. Some of the earliest fiber was installed in the US long–distance network in the early ‘60’s and is still working fine. Modern glass optical fiber is estimated to have a potential useful life of 100 or more years.

The actual  capacity of an optical fiber network is determined by the electronics attached to the fiber. Replacing electronics is far easier and cheaper than replacing the main fiber network itself. Once the basic infrastructure— the fiber network — is in place, it can be easily and cheaply upgraded as needed simply by replacing the electronics. This is NOT the case with either wireless or copper based networks (DSL and cable). In both those cases, the underlying transport medium (copper and the radio spectrum) has inherent physical limitations, making upgrade of delivery capacity much more difficult than it is for fiber. In short, a well designed and constructed FTTH network can be expected to serve our communities for the rest of the 21st century. For more information, see Technology Overview (link to that)

Isn't Fiber uneconomical in rural areas?

No. Fiber is the cheapest way to bring universal, reliable service to all parts of rural America. It is, in fact, cheaper than the copper wires we extended to every American home 100 years ago for telephone service. (Both wireless and DSL can be cheaper if one is only aiming
to “cherry-pick” the most advantageous areas. But both of these technologies present great difficulties and costs if the intent is to provide 100% universal coverage, as ECFiber is committed to do. To do that, FTTH is the most economical—even in rural areas like Vermont).

Why community-owned?

No traditional telecommunications company has offered to make ultra-high-speed service 100% available to rural Vermont. As a community-owned project, this network will ultimately be available to every single household, business, and public institution within the ECFiber territory. Moreover, because ECFiber is community-controlled, customers are protected from unreasonable price hikes and deceptive "teaser rates" with long-term contracts. All jobs created by ECFiber remain in Vermont - there will be no "outsourcing." Once the system is completely built, revenues can be used to reduce costs, improve speeds, or be given back to the towns. Given that no private, profit-driven telecom carrier would build such a network in rural Vermont, a community-owned network is really the only option.

How did ECFiber get started?

Many of the ECFiber member towns organized broadband committees in the early 2000s to try to find a way to bring broadband service to the region.  Working with Al and Laura Duey, project managers for the Vermont Council on Rural Development's Vermont Rural Broadband Project, community and committee meetings were held to try to find solutions.. For the towns that started committees in 2007 or before, many were looking at wireless solutions as the best option. Strafford even got as far as building a network. With a wireless network in mind, Tunbridge grouped together with the committees from Vershire, Chelsea, Royalton and Thetford to form the East-Central Broadband Project.

After the Pomfret Area Project received a response to its Request for Information from Burlington Telecom in the spring of 2007, Al and Laura Duey set up a meeting with Tim Nulty of Burlington Telecom in May of 2007 and invited all of our surrounding towns. After this initial meeting, the interested parties held an organizing meeting in Tunbridge in November 2007, forming committees to pursue the various elements (legal, financial, organizational) that needed to be brought together to create a viable project. ValleyNet, an Upper Valley non-profit ISP provided seed funding for this organizational stage. On Town Meeting Day, March 4, 2008, 25 towns voted to affiliate as East Central Vermont Community Fiber-Optic Network. 

As the group investigated the project further, it became apparent that the original idea of connecting to Burlington Telecom's hub was not going to be a viable option.
ECFiber was created through a legally constituted Inter-local Contract (ILC) pursuant to Vermont Law, signed by the select boards of 22 of the 25 original towns. Pittsfield was admitted shortly after, bringing the total to 23 towns. ECFiber selected ValleyNet, a non- profit telecom and Internet company with a long track record in Central Vermont, to operate the network.
Construction of the Network Operations Center (NOC) in Royalton has been completed, and the network is operational in parts of Barnard, Bethel, and Royalton.

Is there a model for a community-owned network? Where has this succeeded?

ECFiber is an innovative model of multi-town cooperation.  Working together since 2008, the 40+ delegates and alternates that represent the member towns on the ECFiber Governing Board, have built a robust and well-tested governance system.

Approximately 70 municipally-owned FTTH networks around the US are currently offering service directly to citizens (as opposed to “institutional” networks that serve only town governments, schools, etc.). Virtually all of these full-service municipal FTTH networks are successful. Most of these are based on a single municipality, often utilizing an existing municipal electric company as the vehicle. ECFiber towns did not have this option because none of the towns are large enough to undertake an enterprise of this magnitude, and there is no municipal electric company for the region. However, Vermont has a rich history of groups of towns working together to do things (libraries, schools, fire protection, solid waste disposal, public transportation, water supply) that are too large for individual towns to undertake. It is this history that forms the basis for the ECFiber project.

Is the federal government doing anything to expand broadband coverage?

With the passage of the Stimulus program (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), the Federal Government has moved to support the extension of broadband to rural America.  The State of Vermont benefitted from one of the largest total amount of loans and grants under this program. However, in contrast to the rest of the states where about 70% of the grants and loans went to fiber-optic projects, most of the money awarded to Vermont company applicants is designated for wireless service to be provided by VTel. ARRA grants and loans for FTTH were made to Waitsfield/Champlain Valley Telecom, to Topsham Telecom, and to VTel for its Springfield service area.

Why should towns get involved in providing telecommunications services? Wouldn't the private sector do this better?

Universal broadband communications access is fast becoming a necessity, much as public roads, electricity, and telephone service. All these universally-available necessities were built with some form of public support or subsidy. Private providers invest in infrastructure in regions with greatest density, and in Vermont, they have publicly stated their lack of interest in low-density rural areas. The investment plans they have announced have been very small, relative to the need and demand.

Won't this project have an unfair cost advantage over private providers?

The fiber-to-the-home network will pay the same franchise fees, pole attachment costs, and taxes as existing providers.  Under Vermont law, towns are not permitted to use taxpayer dollars to support telecommunications infrastructure development. ECFiber intends to use private financing for its investment, and as a legal municipality it can offer tax-exempt investments. While municipal enterprises do have this benefit, in contrast to other service providers, only ECFiber is committed to using such funds to provide universal, open access service. This is the unique characteristic of ECFiber and derives directly from the fact that it is community owned. Committing to universal, open-access service increases costs compared to a "cherry-picking" strategy of only serving the most profitable areas. This extra cost more than compensates for any perceived "advantage" that ECFiber may be alleged to have compared to private providers.