Nearly a year after the original target date for bringing broadband service to every Vermont address, the state says 2,183 locations still remain to be served.
The state calculates broadband coverage based on reports from providers. There have been instances where service doesn’t extend as far as believed, especially in the case of mobile wireless broadband.
But Department of Public Service Telecommunications Director Jim Porter is confident the figure is accurate.
It represents a tiny fraction of the approximately 300,000 E-911 addresses in Vermont.
Porter says plans are in place to serve all the remaining addresses, but they are part of two projects scheduled for completion next year. “The addresses that are still awaiting the projects to be completed are divided evenly among FairPoint’s project and VTel’s project,” he says.
Both projects are supported with federal dollars. FairPoint receives funding for DSL under the initial phase of Federal Communications Connect America Fund, known as CAF Phase 1. Springfield-based VTel is using about $115 million dollars in federal grants and loans to build an extensive wireless system.
"I'm sure there's going to be our share of surprises and disappointments, but overall the speed people are getting, the quality of the service, the utility of the at-home technology, the mobility factor, the fact that it starts at $10 a month, people seem to like." - VTel President Michel Guite
Currently, the system is available to only a small number of subscribers, but VTel president Michel Guite says the company is on schedule to serve more than 60,000 Vermonters from 121 towers and sites by mid-2015.
“I’m sure there’s going to be our share of surprises and disappointments, but overall the speed people are getting, the quality of the service, the utility of the at-home technology, the mobility factor, the fact that it starts at $10 a month, people seem to like,” says Guite.
He says his attention has turned to how to keep the system robust enough to meet increasing broadband demands.
According to Guite, “The much more complicated part is to recognize how much what people expect from the Internet has evolved over the past three or four years and how to adapt the network so it can deliver what people who will be using it really want.”
At a demonstration of VTel’s system last summer, the company said average download speeds are in the 15 to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) range, but claimed the system is capable of 100 Mbps.
The state’s tally of who has broadband and who doesn’t has been done under a federal grant which stipulates speeds lower than most Vermonters have: 768 kilobits per second (Kbps) download and 200 Kbps upload.
"The much more complicated part is to recognize how much what people expect from the Internet has evolved over the past three or four years and how to adapt the network."
Those speeds are slower than the current FCC definition of broadband which is 4/1 Mbps. Porter says about 22 percent of Vermonters currently have service at 768/200 speeds and that the near term goal is to improve service for the group of addresses with the slowest speeds.
“That will be the first funded addresses from the connectivity initiative which was established last year by the legislature,” Porter says.
A large amount of federal money will also be available under what is called CAF Phase 2, which FairPoint Communications is in line to receive. The FCC announced last week that the money will be used to increase speeds for rural customers to 10/1 Mbps.
The state has set a much higher goal: Universal 100 Mbps (upload and download) speeds by the year 2024. With current technology, this would essentially involve running fiber to every address in Vermont.
Given the expense of reaching those speeds, and the concentration on bringing people up to a lower threshold, the long term goal will likely be more difficult to meet than the effort to get broadband to all Vermonters.
