ADDISON COUNTY — It’s been a productive year for Maple Broadband, Addison County’s nonprofit provider of high-speed fiber-optic internet service.

Maple Broadband has in 2024 already more than doubled its customer base, from 144 to 361. And with its partner Waitsfield Champlain Valley Telecom doing the work in the field, Maple Broadband has also more than doubled the miles along which its fiber-optic cables are hung on utility poles, from 103.7 to 225.4 miles.

According to figures provided by Maple Broadband Executive Director Ellie de Villiers, that also means the internet provider — one of 10 Vermont Communications Union Districts, or CUDs — has a potential customer base (also referred to as “passings”) of 3,380, nearly triple that of the end of 2023.

“We’re ahead of schedule in terms of our construction, and our revenue and installation forecasts are actually right on target,” de Villiers said. “Overall, we’re right where we expected to be, in a good place.”

The work this year consists of what de Villiers called the completion of Phases 1 and 2. Most of Phase 1 was completed in 2023, but some of it wrapped up in February.

Phase 1 consists of portions of Shoreham, Cornwall, northern and eastern Orwell, and western Whiting, plus smaller parts of Salisbury west of Route 7 and even “tiny little corners of Middlebury and Leicester,” according to de Villiers.

Phase 2 includes building a service hub in Vergennes and stringing cable to serve most of the city, de Villiers said, plus “portions of Ferrisburgh, most of Waltham, and New Haven and Monkton. Also, we’ve rounded out almost everything left in Orwell.”

And just as this work was wrapping up, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced this month the award of $229 million for Vermont through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2023.

That funding alone is enough to hook up one-third of the remaining unserved and underserved areas in Vermont, according to a July 31 Vermont Public report broadcast.

Maple Broadband will be one of nine CUDs in Vermont applying for a share of those funds in a competitive process. De Villiers said she and the Maple Broadband’s board, consisting of representatives from each of its 20 member towns (Ferrisburgh’s Steve Huffaker is its chair), believe Addison County CUD’s application will fare well.

“Hopefully we’ll be successful, and that will be a large portion of our funding into next year,” de Villiers said. “I would say I’m very optimistic, but we still need to put in a good bid.”

“DIFFERENT PARTS OF it will get funded in different
ways. But the goal of it will be to make sure every address in the county … has access to fiber by at least one provider … by the end of next year.”
— Maple Broadband Executive Director Ellie de Villiers

Work will be done through parts of Salisbury, Leicester, the Ferrisburgh and Vergennes areas, northern Middlebury and Ripton and elsewhere where there are what de Villiers called “BEAD-eligible addresses,” which she defined as those not served already by a fiber-optic or cable provider.

“Those are the sites that are required” for Maple Broadband to serve, de Villiers said.

The exact number of those are hard to pin down, she said, but they number in the thousands. State and federal officials are sorting through data now, she added, while identifying where Maple Broadband expects Waitsfield Champlain Valley Telecom will be working on its behalf.

“We have a little bit more that we’re planning to build through Salisbury and Leicester,” she said, adding the provider will also be “filling in the gaps.”

“We’re looking at this as one big construction project to do next year. Different parts of it will get funded in different ways. But the goal of it will be to make sure every address in the county … has access to fiber by at least one provider,” de Villiers said. “That’s the goal. By the end of next year, everybody should have fiber available from someone.”

As well as seeking BEAD funding, Maple Broadband plans to use its customer cash flow to leverage a loan or a bond, de Villiers said, possibly one of up to $3 million, to help pay for building out the rest of its network.

CUDs are legally quasi-municipal entities with bonding authority, but are prohibited by law from taxing the towns they serve. Thus the county’s CUD could choose to bond, but at this point de Villiers said Maple Broadband is keeping its options open and tracking interest rates while deciding whether to bond or obtain a loan.

De Villiers took the opportunity while discussing financing to make a plug for potential customers to sign up for Maple Broadband instead of a for-profit provider as a “public service.”

While Maple Broadband must rely on customer revenue, town bequests and state and federal grants, she noted for-profit entities have bases in the more heavily populated areas, which are more profitable. Thus they have a competitive advantage over Maple Broadband after years of failing to serve and ignoring rural customers.

“Which is why it’s so important that people sign up with us and support what we’re trying to do here,” she said. “The only mechanism we have to repay any debt is through subscriptions.”

AFFORDABILITY

Meanwhile, Maple Broadband has been able to offer a significant discount to the small number of its customers who signed up under a recently ended federal affordability subsidy program. De Villiers said Maple Broadband added a $20 credit to that program’s $30 subsidy, and when that federal program ended, boosted it to a $30 credit.

De Villiers said Congress is working on a federal-level replacement for the program, but its fate in D.C. is uncertain.

“Who knows what Congress will end up doing with that one?” she said.

The question of equal access for all and affordability was a hot topic at the July 29 statewide Vermont Community Broadband Board meeting, according to the transcript of a Vermont Public report, with no plan put forward and disagreement on priorities.

According to Vermont Public correspondent Howard Weiss-Tisman, “there was a lot of really interesting debate about this idea of affordability.” He reported the broadband board’s attorney said “the board has to be considering affordability” as a criterion in distribution of the $229 million.

But he also played a clip from Laura Sibilia, a lawmaker from Dover who’s also a broadband board member. According to Weiss-Tisman, Sibilia said “that it is absolutely not a requirement to consider affordability” when the board is setting policy.

In the clip, Sibilia said, “I’m not opposed to us developing an affordability policy, I’m not opposed to any of that. I am really interested in us being clear about what our mandate is. And in almost every case, ‘affordability’ occurs after the phrase, ‘access to reliable.’”

So it remains unclear what strings the Vermont Community Broadband Board might attach to funding requiring a portion of it to help lower-income customers.

The end of the federal program also removed a system for evaluating customers’ eligibility for discounts, and de Villiers expects the broadband board to develop an affordability policy that MBB and other Vermont CUDs will have to follow. At the same time, she said, the state board has not tackled the issue of how CUDs should screen customers to determine eligibility.

She added the CUDs themselves are brainstorming ways to evaluate clients’ ability to pay, but so far without producing a solution.

“Within the Vermont CUD association, we have a couple of ideas of things we might want to do,” de Villiers said. “If and when that gets baked into an actual plan, I’ll definitely let you know.”