Municipal broadband leaders tell Senate Finance Vermont has built miles of fiber but affordability remains urgent

Ellie DeBilders, executive director of Maple Broadband, and Krista Shute, executive director of NEK/CV and secretary of the Association of Communications Union Districts (VACUDA), told the Senate Finance committee on Jan. 29 that Vermont’s municipal CUDs have accelerated fiber deployment but face persistent affordability challenges.

"We can invest every single dollar we have into getting to the last mile and then continue to invest back into the communities," DeBilders said, summing the CUDs’ rationale for public nonprofit ownership. The presenters credited Act 71 (2021), the Vermont Community Broadband Fund, ARPA match funds, USDA Reconnect and other grants with jump-starting deployments.

The presenters said the state-funded programs and local match have supported more than 2,500 miles of publicly funded new fiber and that, in some districts, combined public and private builds now show tens of thousands of "passings" and more than 1,200 miles built within a district. "As a result of that, Vermont is getting closer to universal service faster than what would have been the case otherwise," Krista Shute said.

But they cautioned that access is only part of the equation. DeBilders and Shute told senators that federal support from the Affordable Connectivity Program ended around May 2024 and that many CUDs have been self-funding a similar household subsidy to preserve connectivity for qualifying residents. "Our governing board voted to do the same thing, to take what we had and go through the process, be able to qualify new households and have that subsidy," DeBilders said.

Presenters also discussed how CUD-led builds have sometimes prompted private providers to extend fiber to adjacent areas, increasing competition and offering a route to lower prices. They stressed that long-term affordability will depend on both competition and financing strategies, including a planned 2027 refinancing one presenter said could lower annual debt service and allow modest rate reductions.

Senators and presenters examined the technical mapping conventions used in the briefing slides: blue areas represent symmetrical fiber (100 Mbps or greater), green denotes cable (minimum 100/20), and gray indicates below-threshold service. Presenters said they were awaiting final approvals from the federal BEAD/NTIA process to fund remaining gray-road builds.

The presenters urged better coordination between new housing construction and broadband infrastructure installation to reduce future per-home connection costs and noted that while fiber is the preferred durable technology in much of Vermont’s terrain, wireless solutions remain important where fiber is infeasible.

The session closed with an offer from VACUDA executives to provide follow-up materials and technical support to committee staff about funding mixes and affordability modeling. The committee scheduled additional witnesses and follow-up as part of its broader broadband oversight work.