The Public Service Department is offering more than half a million dollars to companies willing to improve internet speeds for about 68,000 addresses, including those in the Vermont Telephone Co.’s service territory, where coverage is in dispute.
The department is asking internet service providers to use up to $556,273 to upgrade service for customers in all 14 counties in Vermont where speeds of at least 4 megabits per second downloading and 1 megabit per second uploading cannot be confirmed. The companies would have to upgrade the connections to 10 Mbps/1 Mbps.
For the purposes of the grant, the addresses previously assumed to be covered by the VTel Wireless Open World initiative are considered unserved. The state has said the company did not provide information showing which addresses have service.
If VTel wants to keep its competitors from seeking to use the grant money to serve its customers, it will need to use a “challenge process” cited in the May 25 RFP and enter into a written contract with the state by June 6 verifying that the addresses planned to be served as part of Wireless Open World have access to high-speed internet.
The “challenge process” provision is the latest move in the Public Service Department’s monthslong effort to get VTel to provide data saying which addresses can get strong wireless service through its project.
The department has already left the Wireless Open World project off internal maps showing who has broadband coverage.
Michel Guite, the president of VTel, said May 12 that he added VtDigger to his spam filter to avoid getting email inquiries about the project. VtDigger emailed questions Friday to his lobbyist, Kevin Ellis of Ellis-Mills Public Affairs in Montpelier, and did not receive answers from Guite or Ellis by Tuesday afternoon.
The new funding comes through the Connectivity Initiative, a program started in 2014 that uses extra money from the universal service fee on cellphone and landline phone bills to award broadband grants to companies that would not otherwise upgrade speeds in rural areas.
Vermont’s statewide goal since 2011 has been to bring broadband to all 300,000 addresses in the state, although the minimum speed is one of the slowest available: .768 Mbps downloading and .200 Mbps uploading. In 2015, only 601 addresses in Vermont did not have that service, and all those addresses were scheduled to be served through VTel.
In 2015, the department awarded about $875,000 to Comcast, FairPoint and ECFiber as part of the Connectivity Initiative.
“We are pleased to offer this round of grants to enhance our broadband capabilities,” Chris Recchia, the commissioner of the Public Service Department, said in a news release. “We especially look forward to proposals that partner with local communities to advance the local and statewide goals.”