Project History

Most of our region's town committees got started thru Al and Laura Duey who work as project managers for the Vermont Council on Rural Development's Vermont Rural Broadband Project. Al and Laura have attended many meetings in towns all over Vermont helping people to get organized.

Many of our towns started with a survey to determine what the interest level is in getting high-speed internet. All of the surveys received positive results. For the towns that started committees more than a year ago, we were looking at Wireless as our 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 this spring, Al and Laura Duey floated an email to our group about the Fiber-To-The-Home option that was now available thru Burlington Telecom. In terms of quality of service and longevity a fiber network looked very interesting. They set up a meeting for us with Tim Nulty of Burlington Telecom in May and invited all of our surrounding towns.

Burlington Telecom is a municipally owned company formed to bring high-speed internet service to all the homes and businesses in Burlington. It did this using a unique funding model, at no cost to the taxpayers.

After this initial meeting with Burlington Telecom the interested parties grouped to form a 14-town committee called the East-Central Fiber Network.

As the group investigated the project further, it became apparent that the original idea of connecting to Burlington Telecom's hub was no longer an option. Since then ValleyNet, an Upper Valley-based non-profit, hired Burlington Telecom's CEO, Tim Nulty, to build a network and hub.

At town meetings in 27 towns in March 2008, an advisory vote was passed. In most towns the vote was unanimous.

With the signing of the first versions of the Interlocal Contract, ECFiber was officially formed at the first meeting of the Governing Board on April 8, 2008, with 25 towns participating. The final version of the InterLocal Contract, along with a commitment to participate in financing, was signed by 22 towns.