Vermont’s Department of Public Service has a new idea for connecting rural towns to basic cell service: ask the localities to pay for it themselves.
The department put out a bid this summer for a company to replace CoverageCo, which had its state contract cancelled after failing to turn a profit — or pay its bills — on microcell technology deployed in rural parts of the state, where larger providers aren’t interested in expanding.
Now the state is asking local towns and municipalities whether they want to foot the bill for the devices — hundreds of which are either sitting idle in public areas or in storage — estimating that they will cost $1,800 each to operate over the course of a year.
If enough towns are interested, the state would negotiate statewide contracts with a vendor to run the network and with providers like AT&T and Verizon to allow their users to roam on the microcells, said Clay Purvis, director of telecommunications and connectivity at DPS.
“I think there’s a sentiment that if we’re not going to do something with it, then the towns should be able to do something with it,” Purvis said of the unused equipment that was part of a $4 million state investment into its partnership with CoverageCo.
“That being said, we are surveying the towns now about whether they would want to go ahead with it,” he said. “It’s probably not going to be worth it for any contractor unless there’s a critical mass of sites.”
The department sent a survey to towns last month outlining their potential plan and gauging interest.
“In the plan under consideration, the State would retain a contractor to manage the network and arrange toll-free roaming for customers of major mobile wireless service providers,” it said.
“Vermont Towns would sponsor the direct operating costs of microcell sites deployed in their towns,” it adds. “These costs include internet access, electricity, and E-911 geolocation services. These operating costs are estimated to be approximately $1,800 per site, per year.”
The cost would vary widely depending on how many microcells are activated in the towns. For towns like Braintree and Jamaica, with only one microcell, the cost would likely stay under $2,000 for the year. For Chelsea, the town that had the most CoverageCo microcells at 23, the annual cost could be as high as $40,000.
Legislators set aside $100,000 in this year’s broadband bill to help towns pay for consulting services as they consider their options and the associated costs. There is another $800,000 that was earmarked in 2018 to cover infrastructure costs for the company that took over from CoverageCo.
Sen. Randy Brock, R-Franklin, who has worked closely with DPS on it’s cell coverage plans, said the $800,000 could be used to hire a third party install or replace microcell devices, but not on operations.
Brock said legislators were hesitant to spend new money on old technology. “The reason for providing these mechanisms in the short run is to provide this equipment that we have that is certainly yesterday’s technology, but it’s better than nothing,” he said.
“One of the concerns we all had is devoting a lot of money to something that is not very good, not very effective, and doesn’t have a long life.”
Without ongoing state spending, any contractor hired by the state to run the network would need to make an ongoing profit from the providers with subscriber using the network, Purvis said.
“If the system is going to rely on roaming agreements and a fee from carriers, there has to be some amount of traffic captured that would make it worthwhile for a contractor to want to run an overall network,” he said.
Purvis said he expects to hear back from towns in the next couple weeks.
Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, started this legislative session pushing for policymakers to come up with a replacement to CoverageCo, noting that many of her constituents would have no way to make mobile calls, including 911 calls, until that happens.
Sibilia said the department’s proposal made sense, at least until larger providers expanded their service.
“With 2G technology and $900,000, a state-municipal partnership seems like probably the best situation we are going to get,” she said, “unless you have a large provider decide they want to get in that space.”
AT&T has said that its service will cover 99% of the state within a few years, by building a commercial network on the back of a federal first responders network. However, critics and state officials have questioned how realistic that projection really is.
Purvis has said that federal mobility grants, which will be awarded over the next decade, are Vermont’s best chance at realizing universal cell service.