Access to Public Middle-Mile Network Helps ECFiber Deliver Last-Mile Fiber

SOUTH ROYALTON, VT – East Central Vermont Fiber Network (ECFiber), a consortium of 23 towns deploying fiber to the home in Vermont, will be able to use the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA)’s proposed Orange County Fiber Connector at discounted rates to provide service in five ECFiber member towns. Construction is scheduled to begin October 1.

The VTA is leasing strands of fiber to ECFiber, enabling it to reach last-mile customers along the fiber route and on side roads off its path. Funding for the project was made possible by a legislative appropriation in the FY2012 capital budget. VTA provides discounts to entities committed to delivering fiber optic service directly to residential and business customers, and ECFiber is taking advantage of this opportunity.

“We are pleased to have the VTA’s help in extending ECFiber’s fiber-to-the-user network to several hundred additional civic, business and residential customers,” says Irv Thomae, vice chairman of the ECFiber Governing Board. “Cheese makers and software developers alike need last-mile broadband to reach 21st-century markets,” Thomae adds. “This agreement helps us leverage the $1.3 million dollars ECFiber has raised from local investors this year to support economic development by bringing true, state-of-the-art broadband to some of Vermont’s most communications-deprived areas.”

“We commend the Shumlin Administration’s commitment to bring broadband access to every Vermonter by the end of 2013,” says Loredo Sola, ECFiber’s chairman, “and we’re pleased to see the VTA embrace high-speed fiber as the technology of choice for the next generation of Internet connectivity.”

The 36-mile OCFC is being designed and built by Matrix Design Group, the same organization that designed and is building the ECFiber network.