Fidium, county celebrate ‘gig towns’

Cambridge is a “gig town.” Hyde Park is a “gig town.” Even Belvidere is a “gig town.”

Huh? What’s a “gig town?”

It’s the title that’s been conferred to all 10 towns in Lamoille County now that the first and largest phase of the public-private project to build-out fiber internet access to every home, no matter how high up on the hill or how far back in the woods, has been completed.

The $24 million deal between the Lamoille FiberNet communication union district and Fidium Fiber, a subsidiary of Consolidated Communications, was announced last September. The project began in earnest in May.

Last Thursday at Vermont State University-Johnson, representatives from Fidium, the Vermont Community Broadband Board and the town-appointed representatives who oversaw the project with Lamoille FiberNet gathered to cut the ceremonial ribbon.

Just over a year since the project was announced, 328 miles of fiber have been laid by a small army of bucket trucks and line workers, and 14,200 homes and businesses and more than 4,500 previously unserved locations now have access to multi-gig speed and symmetrical fiber broadband internet. All the project’s loose ends are expected to be tied up by next summer.

“The vision was simple: High-quality broadband access should be available to all addresses, even in our rural area, and today we celebrate that vision becoming a reality,” Jeff Tilton, chair of Lamoille FiberNet and its Waterville representative, said.

A 2015 law allowed the creation of the communications union districts and town-centric groups began working toward community broadband in 2019 with the support of the Lamoille County Planning Commission and the community broadband board that was established in 2021. But it was the influx of federal money in the America Rescue Plan Act that has funded the expansion of high-speed internet to rural addresses throughout Vermont over the last few years.

Lamoille FiberNet’s path to success was not necessarily smooth, however. A previous partnership between Lamoille FiberNet and Northwest Fiberworx, the Franklin County communications union district, and Google, announced in 2022, soon collapsed after a flaw in the financial models used to justify the plan emerged.

After the arrival of Lisa Birmingham, a cable industry veteran, the communications district ended up brokering the deal that saw Fidium putting up $10 million to pair with the state’s $14 million. Consolidated had a key advantage as it already had access to the poles throughout the county, allowing them to lay fiber faster and at less of a cost than other communications companies, according to community broadband board director Christine Hallquist.

Contracted lineman worked through the summer, maneuvering around expansive construction projects on state highways and town roads, not to mention the July flooding that waylaid and complicated all these projects.

“There was actually quite a bit of local coordination that happened when the two construction events were happening in the same area,” Tilton said. “I was part of one conversation in the town of Waterville, where the road crew had to work a certain section that the Fiber team would like to have been on.”

Among a full suite of currently serving elected officials at the ribbon cutting was Lucy Rogers — the former state representative from Waterville who previously served on the community broadband board and advocated for funding for broadband expansion during her two terms in the Legislature — Rogers was on hand to witness the fruition of her work, emphasizing the potential impact it could have for rural communities.

“I think it definitely has the impact to reach across different sectors, for people who are working remotely, education, health care,” she said.

Reflecting on the unique role of the community-driven communications union districts in making the dream of universal broadband access a reality, Hallquist said that the model that worked so well in Vermont only did so due to its uniquely cooperative political environment and was irreplicable elsewhere.

She pointed out that Republican Gov. Phil Scott appointed her as director after she attempted to unseat him in 2018.

“It’s not replicable in other states, because in Vermont, we don’t have the same politics as other states, we have communication union districts,” Hallquist said. “We’re the only state that has that.”