Lamoille County internet buildout underway

The public-private partnership between the Lamoille FiberNet communications union district and Fidium Fiber, a subsidiary of Consolidated Communications, is on its way to providing high-speed internet to over 4,800 homes in Lamoille County.

Consolidated trucks will be out setting new fiber wire that will bring high-speed internet to homes in Stowe, Johnson and Eden, along with areas of Cambridge, Belvidere and Waterville— most of the addresses scheduled to be served in the project — with a phase two that will reach a smaller number of addresses next year.

The $25 million deal was announced last year as the answer to the district’s search for a partner to best fulfill its mission to provide high-speed internet to underserved and unserved areas of the county.

Fidium, meanwhile, will get a boost in expanding its services throughout the region. The district provided $14.9 million in state-distributed federal grant money and Fidium contributed $10 million to the project.

Consolidated crews started in village centers, where most of its offices are located, and will expand out toward underserved regions like Nebraska Valley, Sterling Valley and Mud City in the Stowe-Morristown area, while also running new lines down many of the backroads between Eden and Johnson.

“It’s been a Herculean effort for more than three years, so we’re all very excited to see the trucks rolling this summer,” the district’s director, Lisa Birmingham, said.

Jeff Austin, director of Fidium’s build strategy, said coordinating a buildout from village centers to the end of the line had its challenges, but the company could mobilize quickly due to access it’s had to the county’s pole infrastructure as an “incumbent carrier.”

“That’s actually one of our greatest benefits, when we’re looking to build out infrastructure — we already have access to the right of way and to the poles,” Austin said.

The company plans to lay down over 500 miles of fiber wire this summer.

Right now, Fidium offers a two-gigabit service, but the infrastructure it’s installing has the capacity for a 10-gigabit service in anticipation of a growing reliance on internet-connected products that will spur increased demand.

Restrictions on the public funding forbid overbuilding privately owned telecom infrastructure, but the project has carefully allocated the funding so Fidium’s money goes toward wire that will overlap with those businesses, while public dollars only goes toward newly set wire.

“That subsidization is incredibly important as we look to build out our fiber into more rural areas,” Austin said. “Without this grant, and the collaboration with the Lamoille communications union district, and from the community broadband board, we very likely wouldn’t be building out this area.”

Mansfield Community Fiber has constructed a growing network of fiber internet that reaches into areas of Cambridge, Waterville and Belvidere, while Stowe Communications, recently rebranded from Stowe Cable to emphasize its role as an internet provider, has been building out a fiber network into most of Stowe and provides service in some of Cambridge.

“The rising tide is raising all boats here,” Birmingham said. “You see Stowe Cable investing quite a bit in expanding its fiber, so I think all will all bode well for Lamoille consumers.”

According to district projections, Fidium will offer a one-gig internet package for $70 a month to potential customers, while Mansfield Community Fiber offers the same speeds for $90 a month and Stowe Communications offers half that speed for nearly $150 a month.

“One of the reasons we chose to partner with Consolidated was because it offered products at substantially lower cost than we could have afforded on our own,” Birmingham said.

Lamoille FiberNet has been able to find its footing after a previously aborted plan to partner with Google, even while other districts search for different solutions. NEKFiber and CVFiber, two other communications union districts, announced plans in June to merge to better pool resources to serve 71 communities across northeastern Vermont.

With many hooked up to another internet provider or many unserved addresses having turned to the satellite internet company Starlink, the district’s chair and Waterville representative Jeff Tilton said that residents with new internet infrastructure should receive more information in the mail about how to sign up and invite questions about the services provided.

“Word is getting out there,” Tilton said. “We are doing as much as we can with our outreach as well to make sure that word is on the street.”