The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network has announced it will connect an entire town as its second phase. Barnard, Vermont, will be the first town to have universal access to ECFiber's next-generation network.

An update on Phase 1 of this network:

Phase 1, with construction under way (see photo) and scheduled to go live in early August, brings an ultra-high-speed fiber loop from the ECFiber central office near I89 Exit 3, along VT Routes 107 and 12,  to the center of Barnard. ECFiber expects to begin connecting businesses and residents who live on this route in early August and will provide detailed subscriber information closer to that date.

ECFiber has 23 member towns, but Barnard could be the most enthusiastic. This is as grassroots as it gets:

At its June meeting, the ECFiber Governing Board authorized an initiative to extend service to the rest of Barnard town. This requires a second round of capital-raising through a similar "friends and families" offering directed specifically to residents, businesses, and others who wish to support the deployment of universal broadband in Barnard.

Loredo Sola, ECF Governing Board Chair commented, "When we first took our plan to Barnard, we were inundated with residents offering to pay the entire cost of extending the Phase 1 trunk to their homes. This enthusiastic response inspired us to authorize a Barnard-only fund drive."  ECFiber will be organizing informational meetings for Barnard residents and businesses to explain the details of the plan.
When sufficient funds have been committed to build out the entire town, the Barnard Local Fund will close, and construction of Phase 2 can begin.

Barnard had 94% of the community presubscribe!

The success of ECFiber comes without any support of the state, which has continued to pretend wireless connections and out-of-state corporations will provide the networks necessary for the economic development needed by communities.

Valley News took note of the story and expanded on it:

Without other funding streams, it could take seven to 10 years to build out to all 23 towns, Nulty said, but the company is committed to seeing it happen. By building out to Barnard, a town with few other Internet options, and eventually providing “universal coverage” there, ECFiber hopes to demonstrate its business model and attract more investors who could speed up the process.

And some financial details:

In phase one, notes were sold for $4,500 a piece, with varying interest rates depending on the level of investment, Nulty said. For subsequent financing phases, the notes will be valued differently. About 25 percent of the note goes toward the central ECFiber fund to build out future “links” of fiber, he said, and the rest goes toward the network in the specific town being built out -- in this case, Barnard.

And finally, a classic quote from Tim Nulty -- a Vermonter who will always choose to be self-reliant if at all possible:

[I]nterviewed on Tuesday, he said it felt “fantastic” to finally make some tangible progress on the ECFiber dream. He only regretted the time wasted pursuing the federal stimulus money.

“As a native Vermonter, I can't tell you how many nights of sleep I've lost for going to the federal government with a beggar's bowl when we should have done it ourselves,” Nulty said. “So, it feels good, but it’s also coupled with immense regret.”

Update: We have covered the second round of financing from ECFiber here.

The East Central Vermont Fiber Network, connecting some 23 rural towns, announced back in July that they would self finance a pilot project as a preliminary step to securing the full funding for the project.

Right around Thanksgiving, last year, David Brown updated the community on progress via an article in the Vermont Standard:

It would have been terrific to get the $50million needed to build out all 35,000 telephone and electric poles with 1,500 miles of fiber optic cable. Along the way, we learned an important lesson. We noticed that government money went to existing telephone companies to expand existing networks rather than funding start-ups like ours. That’s when the ECFibernauts decided on a change in strategy: build a small network, get a few real customers, and deliver rock-solid ultra-fast Internet to them as a proof of concept – all using our own money. Then, when all the critical components are up and running, go to the commercial markets for funding needed to expand out to all 23 towns.

The ECFiber Governing Board and our technology partners ValleyNet, Inc. are fortunate to have several experienced financiers within our ranks. Working with our attorneys (to keep everything legal) ECFiber is reaching out to the community with a private offering of tax-exempt promissory notes. As of this writing, we have raised more than three-quarters of what is needed to complete Phase I of our project. The ECFiber hub is now under construction on Waterman Road in Royalton and an initial pole attachment application for 500 poles is being processed. Phase I will bring ECFiber service to selected businesses, schools, town facilities and residents in Bethel, Barnard, Stockbridge and Royalton.

This is a commitment that few other communities have made -- self-financing a start up portion. It is actually quite inspiring, though one quickly grasps the huge need from the stories EC Fiber has collected. Any community hoping to organize a network should copy this EC Fiber page. With a simple form, you can documents hundreds of individual stories of people who want better broadband.

Consider what Cynthia in Norwich contributed:

I live in a remote part of Norwich with little population but much need. I am an artist and photographer, mostly working at home. Due to some health issues, I am not always able to go somewhere else to access high-speed internet, nor is it convenient to do so. I have to drive 6-8 miles to the nearest library, and can only take a small laptop which doesn't have all the information to run my business. I have a web site (www.creaturekinships.com) which takes forever, on flaky dial-up to revise, and downloading updates and security measures can take hours. Since I work with art and photography and am a moderator on a photography web site (NatureScapes.net), I can't do my work efficiently as it also takes several minutes to get images...IF the phone line doesn't crash while downloading (which it often does.) I typically need to look at and comment on 5-15 images a day. I would be looking at more like 20-30 images if I could.

EC Fiber had applied to the Vermont Telecommunications Authority for a $4.2 million grant to build the backbone of the network and connect a number of community anchor institutions as well as some 800 homes in the most rural and least competitive areas.

In a plea for supporters to write the VTA and other officials in support of the project, Ian Stewart described local hardships:

I understand the Vermont Law School has experienced an uptick in potential students opting not to attend VLS because they can’t get broadband access from their rented accommodations. Beside renting apartments, these temporary Vermonters bring much needed revenue to our local businesses and contribute to the daily lives of our communities. We all lose every time a VLS applicant withdraws his candidacy.

Even if VTA wanted to prioritize funding for ECFiber, its hands are limited by the law, which limits where VTA can fund:

The RUS award was great news to VTel shareholders, but it stopped dead in its tracks any plans the VTA may have had to help other organizations bring high speed internet service to rural Vermont. The Vermont legislature passed a bill with language that prohibits the VTA from funding telecom development in any area where another entity has a “legally binding commitment” to make telecom investments. That includes VTel’s award and Fairpoint’s DSL build-out commitments. The language effectively poisoned the waters for anyone else seeking VTA funding, including ECFiber’s efforts to bring ultra high speed Internet to 23 area towns.

This is a failure to distinguish between broadband as infrastructure (wireline) and broadband as stopgap (wireless). Nonetheless, ECFiber does qualify for some funds under the "Backroads Broadband Program" for middle mile and the most unserved households. The end of this article in the Vermont Standard is a call to action for people to contact the VTA.

Regardless of the VTA funding, EC FIber is moving forward on its pilot:

At ECFiber’s November Governing Board meeting, ValleyNet staff reported that the Phase I fiber-optic network build has begun with the first round of pole surveys conducted with Fairpoint and CVPS, as required by regulation.

As of Jan 6, had raised $907,500 from the community for the first phase, exceeding their goal.

ECFiber Governing Board Chair Loredo Sola of North Pomfret said, "This is a very important and hard-fought first step. Phase I establishes a baseline for building and operating cost, build time, expected market penetration, and resulting revenue. That baseline gives ECFiber a solid platform on which to build its network to all twenty-three ECFiber member towns."

"More importantly," said Sola, "this community-raised financing demonstrates confidence in a community-owned and managed network as well as frustration that public and private promises to bring us broadband have fallen way short. Here's an example in true Vermont tradition of communities stepping up and taking charge."

As it moves forward, it moves out of the shadow of Burlington Telecom's problems -- though detractors will undoubtedly continue to try to tie them together.

Vermont's Department of Public Service has released its audit of Burlington Telecom. The audit is highly flawed and a disappointment in terms of actually illuminating what went wrong with Burlington.

We have been awaiting this audit in the hopes that it would actually explain how the network could have gone into such great debt so quickly. The few answers provided from this audit are entirely unsatisfactory, due in large part to its overall sloppiness. We will soon put up a more substantial post about Burlington and lessons learned, but we wanted to post this information now as readers are undoubtedly wondering.

The audit should be read by any community running or considering a network because it describes a number of bad practices that should not be duplicated. That said, it isn't yet clear how accurate the audit is (they did not even attempt to interview key people), as explained by Tim Nulty in his response to it (linked below). Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that the audit simply did not explain where the money went. Steve Ross examined this question more than a year ago, but we appear no closer to an answer. A longer explanation on this, next week.

Finally, Andrew Cohill's thoughts about lessons learned from BT is well worth a read as well. Regardless of whether BT really did make all those errors, Cohill's post should serve as an educational item to any community considering such an important investment.

The Chelan Public Utility District in Washington state is upgrading network capacity as it starts expanding the network following its broadband stimulus award. We previously covered their consideration of whether to expand from passing 80% of the territory to 98%.

Chelan is one of the most rural publicly owned fiber networks as well as one of the oldest ones. In a rarity, it looks likely to run in the red permanently (the pains of rural, mountain terrain) with the support of most ratepayers. These ratepayers recognize the many benefits of having the network outweigh its inability to entirely pay for itself. The utility also runs a sewer project that is subsidized by wholesale electricity sales. Though some areas in Chelan are served by Charter and Frontier, the more remote folks would have no broadband access if not for the PUD.

With the planned upgrades in 2011, Chelan's open access services will offer far faster speeds than available from the cable and DSL providers. Under Washington law, the PUDs cannot sell telecommunications services directly to customer. The PUD builds the network infrastructure and allows independent service providers to lease access while competing with each other for subscribers. Though this is a great approach for creating a competitive broadband market, it has proved difficult to finance (if one believes this essential infrastructure should not be subsidized as roads are).

When the PUD considered whether to pursue the expansion (meaning taking a federal grant covering 75% of the costs and agreeing to run the network for 22 years), it asked the ratepayers for feedback:

Sixty-four percent of 450 randomly chosen Chelan County registered voters who were part of phone survey in August said they favor taking the grant and completing the buildout, even if it means their electric bills will go up by as much as 3 percent — about $1.50 more on a $50 per month power bill.

On November 9, PUD Commissioners approved the rate increase.

Chelan's service providers currently offer connections of 6Mbps/384kbps or 12 Mbps/384kbps. As with other early BPON networks, the speeds were asymmetrical. While other community fiber networks have upgraded to offer much faster symmetrical speeds, Chelan has opted to continue a heavily asymmetric offering.

They will continue the 6Mbps option (for service providers who are not ready to upgrade their equipment to offer faster speeds) while adding a 25/2 and 100/100 option. They are also adding a 1 Gbps commercial option.

Frontier and Charter advertise maximum connections at 7/.768 and 25/3 respectively.

Service providers on the network will have to pay higher rates to continue using the network, though they also will get a discount from the PUD when they sign up customers for more than one service (bundling).

Providers will have to pay an extra $4 per customer while the bundling discount will be $2 or $3.

Service providers will have to pay Chelan $22.35 for a 100Mbps connection to a customer and $19.35 for either a 25/2 or 6/.384 connection.

However, there are some complications (detailed in this article toward the end) -- because Chelan was such a pioneer of this technology, the earliest subscribers will have to wait longer to access faster connections.