Broadband Expansion Grant Awarded for Rural Vermont

MONTPELIER, VT - The Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA) has announced a broadband grant to ECFiber of $167,569. The award will help the company build fiber-optic facilities and offer broadband Internet services to locations currently without access. The VTAs target grant areas include 17 addresses near the Norwich-Thetford town line as well as other locations in Norwich.

ECFiber will be connecting its fiber optic lines to the VTAs 36-mile Orange County Fiber Connector (OCFC) project. OCFC brings communications infrastructure to one of the most underserved areas in Vermont. It was designed to enable service providers to easily bring last-mile service to homes and businesses.

"This award will enable ECFiber to provide broadband service in much-needed areas," Governor Shumlin said. "Investments like this will truly help us expand broadband service statewide by the end of the year."

New service will be available in Norwich, along currently unserved locations on Bragg Hill Road, Cossingham Road, New Boston Road, Kerwin Hill Road, and Route 132. In Union Village, Thetford, new service will be available to addresses on Main Street. Locations to be served by the grant will have access to broadband Internet service at symmetrical speeds of 5, 10 and 20 Mbps. These exceed the grant’s minimum requirement to offer a combined upload and download speed of 5 Mbps.

Irv Thomae, ECFiber Chair, commented, "As a grassroots organization dependent almost entirely on local investors and volunteers, ECFiber has often had to delay building very logical planned routes until sufficient funds can be raised. We're especially pleased that these grants will allow us to implement two or three such routes, including additional underserved locations on both sides of the Thetford-Norwich border."