Broadband update: Fewer than 1% of occupied properties in Colchester still un- or underserved
COLCHESTER — Based on a review of the most current state information, in conjunction with data from a Fidium Fiber rollout in Chittenden County completed in July, there are only 51 occupied properties in Colchester which do not have adequate internet access.
Town Manager Aaron Frank said this accounts for 0.78% of occupied properties in town.
Because Consolidated Communications and Comcast already had extensive coverage within Colchester, most addresses in the Town were considered “served” with at least 25/3 Mbps even prior to Consolidated Communications’ Fidium rollout.
Act 71, enacted in June 2021, says millions of dollars in public funds are limited to projects that bring high speed internet — meaning at least 100/100 Mbps — to locations that are “unserved” with service of less than 4/1 Mbps and “underserved” with service of less than 25/3 Mbps.
The relatively low number of locations in Colchester eligible for Act 71 funding significantly limits Colchester’s ability to access public funds for broadband expansion, which factored into the selectboard’s decision not to join the Chittenden County Communications Union District in 2022.
Without access to sufficient public funds to substantially incentivize private companies to undertake broadband expansion in Colchester, the town and its residents have limited options to improve the availability of broadband, according to Frank’s broadband review.
The current framework for broadband funding in Vermont has therefore left Colchester in the position of waiting for private entities to determine that bringing broadband to “unserved” and “underserved” areas of town is a good business decision and financially viable, Frank stated.
Luckily, Consolidated Communications had decided to roll out a new Fidium Fiber network and extend it into regions of Colchester anyway. Its coverage plans went live about five months ago.
At that time, 102 addresses in Colchester were defined as either “unserved” or “underserved,” accounting for about 1.6% of all addresses in town.
By cross-referencing that list of 102 addresses with the online Fidium Fiber availability tool, the town manager’s office found that 36 of those addresses on the state’s list appear to now have access to fiber through Fidium.
Therefore, the recent Fidium Fiber expansion in Colchester has lowered the state’s last count of “unserved” and “underserved” addresses in Colchester by 35%, leaving 66 addresses remaining “unserved” or “underserved.”
Included among the addresses where Fidium Fiber recently expanded its fiber-speed service are addresses on Middle and East Roads, where residents had already worked tirelessly to secure funding for a cable-line extension via a state program, which took years to achieve.
Those addresses now have access to both cable internet and fiber.
After the recent Fidium Fiber expansion, about 1% of all addresses in Colchester are still “unserved” or “underserved” on the state list.
Of these 66 addresses remaining on the state’s list, 32 — or 0.49% — are year-round residential properties; 19 — or 0.29% — are seasonal properties; four are duplicates; three are properties with no buildings; three are Law Island and Sunset Island in Outer Malletts Bay; and five are commercial or government properties where 25/3 verified internet exists: 95XXX, Myers Container Service and Camp Johnson.
This leaves 51 occupied properties, or 0.78% of total occupied properties, in Colchester still lacking at least cable speed 25/3 Mbps internet.
Bud Meyers, a Colchester resident living on Sunset View Road in Colchester, did not have access to high speed internet until Fidium rolled out fiber to his area this past summer. He is grateful to have seen that shift in recent months.
“We've been trying to get broadband out here for several years,” Meyers told the Sun. “I do a fair amount of statistical work for the work that I do, so I'm in the process usually of downloading data from servers all around the world and it got to be really tedious.”
He had satellite downloading for about a year in the early 2000s through Westelcom and had then gotten a DSL line from Consolidated Communications, which his household used until it got to be too slow. It was only “something like 3.6 megabits,” and could hardly be used to watch television.
Meyers stayed on that plan for some time, and managed to later acquire 15 or 20 megabits per second through a nearby Verizon cell tower, and later reached out to Comcast and Consolidated Communications about getting improved speed of his area’s service but was told “no” last winter due to an issue with running fiber along the polls on the road — but lo and behold, Meyers and his family eventually received an email from Fidium about new fiber coming to their area.
The news came as a pleasant surprise.
“I think most of our neighbors now have Fidium and everybody that I know is pretty happy with it,” he said. “It’s great, we haven’t experienced any real outages.”
The only exception in Meyers’ experience was a minor circuit breaker difficulty which was promptly resolved, as well as a glitch with his Blink security cameras that needed to be hooked into a server and were previously working somewhat from a hotspot on the Verizon cell towers.
Fidium figured out within a month of Meyers switching to their network that the modem was running at such a high speed it was outpacing the capacity of the cameras to function, so Meyers now has those operating on an old router from his old Westvelcom satellite system.
“Everybody was sort of, ‘Oh darn, you know, we're not part of one of those CUDs,’” Meyers said, reflecting on the anxieties his community initially felt before the Fidium rollout. “It didn't look like the funding was going to be available to those of us in Colchester who were in remote locations. And, you know, the town was sorry about that. There wasn't much they could do.”
“They did, from time to time, send queries to Consolidated, Comcast and other folks who might have been a solution, it may have had a good effect,” he added. “Keeping the issue alive.”
Going forward, town staff will continue to monitor funding availability and opportunities to partner with other towns or businesses to improve the quality of internet service available to residents and businesses, Frank stated in his update.
Broadband of at least 100/100 Mbps is regarded as the level of broadband service needed to truly meet today’s demands. Fiber offers 1000 Mbps. Significant investment would be needed over time to bring that level of broadband service throughout Colchester.
Frank’s full broadband update can be found online, attached in the informational items list from the agenda of the Dec. 13 selectboard meeting.
View the full story from the Colchester Sun: https://www.colchestersun.com/news/broadband-update-fewer-than-1-of-occupied-properties-in-colchester-still-un--or-underserved/article_a664abfa-9abe-11ee-a70e-d7c134f3b3d1.html