Fidium Fiber expands coverage in Essex, Essex Junction and Colchester; uncertainties about broadband remain for a number of addresses in all municipalities
CHITTENDEN COUNTY — Fidium Fiber recently expanded multi-gig speed fiber-optic broadband coverage to addresses in Essex Junction, Essex Town and Colchester, as well as to Williston.
The company’s new fiber network has now made its fiber coverage available to 3,400 homes and businesses in Essex Junction and 2,200 homes and businesses in Essex Town, 1,300 homes and businesses in Colchester and 1,500 homes and businesses in Williston.
This network brings increased availability of two gigabit symmetrical internet services, meaning users can get both two gig upload and download on the internet.
“So it's the same in both directions,” said Jeff Austin, senior director of fiber build strategy at Fidium, of the two gigabit service. “Which is the most exciting part for us. I mean, that speed, those service options, are really just going to help people with working from home, schooling from home, increased access to telehealth services.”
The availability of fiber means of accessing important economic development opportunities — such as offering Wifi from a small business like a cafe — and home-based educational materials and appointments, not only makes possible the activities themselves which are increasingly reliant on the internet, but can also — for that very reason — increase home values.
“What we're building out really on our next generation, future proof fiber network,” Austin said. “It really is a game changer at this point.”
The two gigabit service is sold at $75 per month, with plans going down to 50 megabytes for $35 a month and so on and so forth.
The physical network stems out of Fidium’s central office in downtown Essex Junction, and runs fiber paths to extend down utility poles through central regions of towns and to spread out from there through other central regions and neighborhoods.
Construction began in late February and completed in late July and is now available to the public for purchase.
This new greater Essex regional build has a million feet of fiber in its network, or 189 miles.
“When you start building out and you are building out to the main arteries and you're building out through all the neighborhoods and everywhere else, it really adds up,” Austin said. “It's amazing how much fiber it takes to cover an area.”
Fidium’s recent fiber build project was privately funded through its own $12 million investment.
The company expects its investment to pay off, as most of the areas it’s expanded to are fairly densely populated already, with some pockets in which future development is anticipated.
“The way that I think about this is, everyone is onboard: broadband providers, the federal government, state government, local governments, the CUDs,” Austin said. “So we're kind of in this environment where now everybody's rowing in the same direction.”
The state has been looking to bring broadband to all Vermonters for a while, and the rollout of broadband is happening through a combination of private investment and the government funds available, as well as increased public-private partnerships with towns and Communication Union Districts.
“Now's the time right to make all this happen,” he said. “Now's the time and I’m just really proud to be a big part of this movement.”
Statewide by the end of the year, Fidium will be available to 110,000 Vermont homes and businesses across the state, which will amount to $100 million of worth of investment into the state, a combination of both private Consolidated Communications dollars and publicly funded assistance, said Kyle Thweatt, senior communications specialist at Fidium Fiber.
The company’s statewide expansion also includes a partnership with the Southern Vermont CUD, which has become the first CUD to achieve universal service coverage, Thweatt said.
Although Fidium started its build-out in New England in 2020, during which the COVID-19 pandemic hit and a number of supply chain issues heightened and labor became less readily available — which has still been, to some degree, a challenge — the company has not had to slow down its rollout plan as a result of those challenges. Thanks to its strong partnerships with vendors, it could scale up efficiently and effectively with materials and electronics equipment.
But while private company investments, at least at Fidium, have been relatively smooth sailing, public municipalities, even in the towns in Chittenden County that Fidium has just expanded into, are still not without their broadband rollout challenges.
Challenges remain for small number of addresses
While the Fidium rollout is making it possible for more people to get speedy internet, some local addresses are still lacking decent internet.
The good news is, addresses in less densely populated regions of the state are where public funding comes in and becomes most available.
But because a lot of regions in Chittenden County are more populated than much of the rest of the state, the challenge for municipalities like Essex Junction, Essex Town and Colchester — most of which have access to some level of internet, though a few are still lacking high-speed broadband — is that the homes which haven’t been covered by way of private investments or infusions of public funds, are addresses that won’t see much public funding in the rollout.
For good reason, Act 71 — through which there are limited public funds available — is intended to focus on providing the most funding to Vermont addresses that are the most underserved.
But ultimately, the statewide goal is to get every residential and business address — especially those without access to cable — up to speed with top-tier, fiber-optic broadband coverage.
Act 71’s fiber-specific stipulations leave homes that haven’t been reached by private company investments behind and in an uncertain position in regard to the timeline of when even a lower-tier but still generally high speed cable style broadband will become available to them.
In order to access Act 71 funding, municipalities are required to commit to updating everybody to fiber-speed broadband, as opposed to just ensuring that everyone still has access to another broadband option, as fiber is fastest, despite fiber being oftentimes less affordable to roll out.
Broadband of some sort is available almost everywhere in Colchester. By the state’s count, 104 commercial and residential addresses, which accounts for only 1.5% of addresses in Colchester, lack cable speed internet, Colchester Town Manager Aaron Frank told the Sun.
“Since Act 71 was signed by the Governor in June 2021, town staff have exhaustively evaluated opportunities for Colchester to utilize the financial resources the state has dedicated to broadband expansion,” he stated in an email to the Sun. “There are significant challenges for Colchester to be able to access the available broadband, but town staff continue to research and work towards providing improved broadband to residents.”
Because cable, cell, landline telephone and internet provisions are offered by the private sector and regulated by the state, Frank said to the best of his knowledge that besides Fidium, the broadband provider with the largest number of customers in Colchester is Comcast.
There are other broadband providers in town which may specialize in certain areas or serve only businesses, as well as satellite broadband providers that serve some residential properties.
In the past, Colchester’s selectboard discussed whether to join a communications union district in an effort to acquire state funding and to coordinate a collective, regional broadband buildout, but ultimately decided not to, despite advice from a part-time project manager, Meredith Dolan, as well as Frank, that it appeared to be the best opportunity available to access any funds at all.
The funding available to Colchester accounted for only about 3-5% of what they needed for public dollars by way of Act 71.
Most of Colchester is covered, and those 104 residential and commercial addresses which aren’t is a figure that even includes addresses many consider lower-priority due to their use as vacation homes or seasonal camps.
To obtain access to the approximately $325,000-$460,000 of funds the town is eligible for through Act 71 to address the approximately 125 properties un- and underserved by broadband, the town would have to provide fiber speed broadband by way of a Universal Service Plan to roughly 7,000 properties in Colchester, which they estimate would cost $4-8 million.
Ultimately, Colchester decided that since they could not promise its voters surefire outcomes of joining a CUD, it wouldn’t, despite there being no taxpayer liability and a very low or no risk at all for incurring any debt as a town, even if it chose to leave a CUD after joining.
“It seems to be becoming more and more challenging to use the federal money because of all the strings,” Frank said. “One of the challenges [is] you can't upgrade [just] the hundred [lacking broadband], you need to upgrade all of the properties to fiber steam broadband. So, we’re trying to do something without anywhere near the money that’s [necessary].”
As Frank sees it, the Act 71 funding provisions for state broadband goals significantly favors the areas with the lowest levels of broadband coverage at present, meaning those without even cable speed internet access — which makes sense to address the statewide goal and serve communities that arguably need it most.
“At the same time, in a community like Colchester, with a very high percentage of un- and underserved broadband coverage, and thus very little funding compared to the costs based on the current state funding formulas, the state funding and programs did not make sense for us at this time,” Frank stated in an email to the Sun.
However, some municipalities in the county have chosen to participate in CUDs, in an effort to acquire Act 71 funding — and to look beyond Act 71 and into acquiring other available options for potential federal dollars that might be available for use in the broadband rollout cause.
Unlike Colchester, Essex Town and Essex Junction are both involved in the Chittenden County Communications Union District, and this CUD intends to serve as a means of acquiring the funding for both municipalities — along with the other municipalities participating — to eventually get broadband to everyone.
“I have been the chair of the Communications Union District,” said Essex Junction City Manager Regina Mahony. “And yeah, it’s been good. We're at the very initial stages in comparison to some of the other communications union districts in terms of how to figure out how to get folks who are un- and underserved, covered.”
Similarly to Colchester, Essex Town and Essex Junction’s other biggest broadband provider in addition to Fidium is Comcast, as far as the CCCUD is aware, according to an email from CCCUD Clerk Ann Janda.
Burlington Telecom offers broadband in some areas of Essex Junction, as well. Fidium’s parent company Consolidated Communications also still offers low-speed, 25 megabits per second download speed and 2 megabits per second upload speed internet in Essex Junction.
Addresses are considered served with at least 25 Mbps download and at least 3 Mbps upload speed; underserved with between 25 and 4 Mbps download and between 4 and 1 Mbps upload speed; and unserved with fewer than 4 Mbps download and fewer than 1 Mbp upload speed.
The county’s CUD is unaware of whether other companies have recently built out or are in the process of building out broadband at this time, but its ongoing plans can be viewed here.
Essex Town has 145 addresses still unserved, meaning they lack internet access altogether or can only access less than 25/3 speed internet. It has five addresses considered underserved.
The CCCUD has received $300,000 in preconstruction funding from the Vermont Community Broadband Board.
“Preconstruction funds are not divided among participating towns,” Janda told the Sun. “The funds are spent on prep work for the district as a whole. Once construction funds are accessed, the funds will be distributed according to the number of un- and underserved locations in each participating town.”
The CCCUD has hired Mission Broadband as a consultant to map the un- and underserved sites in the district, develop a gap analysis and prepare a request for proposal for internet service providers to form a public-private partnership to access public funding to extend broadband fiber to the un- and underserved areas within participating municipalities.
The mapping is expected to conclude very soon and the CCCUD hopes to develop a draft RFP in a few weeks.
“The goal is feasible,” Janda stated in an email, of getting broadband to everyone in the CUD. “Other VT CUDs have accomplished this task. The only issue is the time it takes to fully understand the complexities of broadband service delivery and all the requirements of federal funding programs.”
Mahony of Essex Junction told the Sun she’s struggled at times to understand how many addresses are un- or underserved, because most of the mapping tools available at the moment are either outdated to some degree with fiber bills outpacing readily available public data, include facilities and structures in their count that lack a meaningful need for internet — such as storage units and sheds — or come with nonspecific legends, lack specification as to which providers have broadband where or display otherwise imprecise data.
“The places that are unserved — this can probably be true for the state as a whole, but in Chittenden County in particular, we're fairly dense in comparison to other places in the state,” she said. “And if you look at the map, you can see some of these un- and underserved places are really sort of sprawled out like Swiss cheese all over the place. And for whatever reason, those have just not been financially viable places to observe with a better internet product.”
Luckily for most residents, by the look of this map, there appear to be as few as seven underserved addresses and two unserved in Essex Junction.
An even more recently updated count from Mission Broadband finds only five unserved addresses with no underserved ones. Still, the city’s officials have involved themselves for the sake of their community to address this need.
“The state is really coming to the table and saying ‘We've got to incentivize,’ and then also requires that truly, that people who really don't have any real internet service right now, those are the people that should have the public dollars going to them to make sure they get served,” Mahony said.
Although Essex Junction has far fewer un- and underserved addresses than Colchester and Essex Town, many Junction residents still lack the highest-speed option, which is fiber. Essex Junction’s CUD participation aims to work around the limitations of Act 71 by looking elsewhere to get its population currently served with decent internet already on cable updated with even more speedy fiber options at whatever point they can acquire the necessary funds to do so.
“In Chittenden County, we have a slew of cable in the middle,” Mahony said. “So, [for] those folks there are no public dollars right now through Act 71 that are eligible to get people who have cable service upgraded to a fiber service.”
This lack of assistance eligibility through Act 71 has prompted the CCCUD to seek out federal funding alternatives, which are still being actively looked into by the CCCUD.
With the preconstruction grant they currently have, members are pursuing the RFP Janda mentioned, to be put out to internet service providers as a partnership proposition.
“And our hope is that we get some people responding to that RFP that will help us get these folks served,” Mahoney said.
In an effort to prioritize most in need, upgrading folks who already have access to cable onto fiber-optic-speed service is not a goal of the Act 71 funding source most well known to Vermonters at the moment. But Mahoney also resonates with the principle behind that idea.
“I think that the goal of the communications union district [too] is that first and foremost, our intent is to get those folks who are un- and underserved served,” she said. “And then the hope is just that it will also provide more fiber options for people throughout the county [as a result].”
She hopes this will happen as a radiating byproduct of getting fiber from where it currently exists and into the places that are considered to be un- and underserved.
“It's likely that we'll see more fiber connected and to get to those places, which in turn will just help others who only have cable right now,” she said. “Hopefully, we'll have additional fiber options.”
Read the full article from the Colchester Sun here: https://www.colchestersun.com/news/fidium-fiber-expands-coverage-in-essex-essex-junction-and-colchester-uncertainties-about-broadband-remain-for/article_d2d4240c-780b-11ee-9934-3ff754438fde.html