Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We're live. Hey. Welcome, everybody, to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is the January 29. And we are here with our communication union districts to get an update, learn about their progress. So we'll go around the room and introduce ourselves, and then we'll turn it over to you. I'm rep Kathleen James from the Bennington Ford District.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint Godsberry.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Richard Bailey from Lamoille too. This tomorrow, Windham Windsor, Bennington.

[Rep. Christopher Howland]: Christopher Howland, Bram Kleppner, Washington two. And Chittenden, 13, Burlington.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright. And joining us in the room today, Katie up for Chase and EKCD.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Haley Perry with the Crassons Group.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Super.

[Nick Anzalone]: I'm Nick Anzalone. I'm the chair of the

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: board for EKCD. Good. Zacoff, EKCD. FX one. I am the chair of the EC five governing board.

[F.X. Flinn (Chair, ECFiber Governing Board)]: Great. Rob Biedzky with Bramalk Communications Union Districts Association. Super. Mike Southworth, Caledonia too.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And you'll be joining us in a moment. So alrighty. For the record.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: For the record, I'm Ellie De Villiers, the executive director of Maple Broadband and the chair of the Vermont CD Association. And my name

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: is Christa Schood. I'm the executive director of NEK CV, which is NEK Broadband and CV Fiber, and also the secretary of the Pharmacy and the Association. Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Cool. Do you have slides to share? Yes. We do. Great.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You just have to do share on Zoom, Sarah.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We have until 09:30, and then we're gonna swap seats.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Okay. So while we're getting the slides up, the first one is to just remind you guys to orient you as to what our communication union districts and then what is the Vermont CD Association. So communications union districts, we are municipal entities, and we are not for profits. So we're like a water district or a sewer district, And what we do is we build broadband. We build fiber to the home. CEDs were originally formed by the votes of towns coming together, and then towns can add themselves to CED by vote select board. So the the CEDs were mostly all formed with the exception of EC fiber, is the original model. The newer CDs were formed around 2020. So the governance of the CDs is every town is appointing is able to appoint delegates and an alternates, and that comes together to form the governing board. So we have governing boards, and then many of us have executive committees that meets more frequently to handle the the day to day because these are obviously very technical kinds of things that we're working on. So require more time and more expertise than you could reasonably expect, delegates from every member town to participate in. So as CUDs, we are committed to universal service. That is one of the requirements of the Act 71 ARPA funding, which we'll talk about in a little bit. So that's also our commitments as CUDs. We wanna make sure that we build infrastructure that everyone can access the infrastructure. And as public entities, the accountability, transparency, these these are all important to us. So we, as UDs, we are we are public entities, so we own the infrastructure. And every one of us, there's different models for how we've done it, but we all have public private partnerships for the operation of the networks. So the CUDA is the Vermont Communications Union Districts Association. So eight of the nine cities are members of CUDA, and we exist to come together to act as a a shared voice in matters of policy, government affairs, and also just to work together and collaborate and things that touch all of us, which is really actually a lot of things from how we do things. Because if you think about it, and again, with the exception of EC Fiverr that's been around for a number of years, the rest of us have all we're all startup entities and small startup entities. Some are bigger than others, but it makes sense that when we're all building things and getting stood up and working with our operating partners, that's we would have a lot of things where it makes sense to collaborate with each other to make sure that we're learning from each other and learning from each other's mistakes and really just being as efficient as we can with what we're doing and how we're doing. So that's really the point of CUDA is to drive efficiencies, and just some examples of how we do that. So the goal, statewide world class broadband. So this is our goal, but this is also the legislature's goal. So as you some of you will remember very well and some of you may have maybe less familiar, but will know this is now not that old of history. Act 71 of 2021 formed the Vermont Community Broadband Board and the Vermont Community Broadband Fund. So that was taking about $250,000,000 of ARPA money and using that to kick start the CUDs. So that was not that was, like, the middle part of the story, but it's important because this funding is what enabled us the the intent of this funding was to get us to critical math or to finish the job on our own, and then universal service mandates of saying, you're gonna take the grant money, you can't just take it in cherry pick. You need to build to the unserved and underserved. You need to commit to finishing the job. So that was the legislature's strategy as outlined in act 71 of 2021, and that is the marching orders we have been going on ever since then. So fiber so as as CUDs and, anything that's funded under this, we've been building fiber to the premises. So FTTP, sometimes might hear FTTH, fiber to the home. So this is the only technology that is guaranteed to deliver symmetrical broadband. So terrestrial wireline infrastructure. I was having a conversation this morning about different forms of wireless and how they don't necessarily work. I mean, they're they're great for what they are, but when you have terrain and you have weather and you have hills and you have leaves, it's not you you can't you can't expect the technology to be, you know, to

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: be a wireless technology to be perfect.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: And then also we have satellite technologies, which again work great, but they have their own technical drawbacks. You wanna purchase capacity that if everyone was to all try to be on the same satellites, they wouldn't be able to handle the load anymore than if you've ever been to an event and you overload the cell tower and nothing works. You know? Same sort of principle. So this fiber that we're building is a long term infrastructure investment. And then as it's COD controlled, publicly controlled, it we're enabling upgrades and then the pricing and consumer protection for the long run. So we're building the infrastructure and the fact that we have control over it is working to be to be looking after these long term considerations. So, again, EC Fiber was the pioneer. Without them as a model, I don't think we I think it's fair to say we wouldn't be where we are today. And CDs have pursued different strategies to get to the end result, but the end result is, we're not at the end yet, but we're getting there.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Okay, and I would say in terms of the different strategies, there are certain CUDs that partnered with Phytium and then there are certain CUDs that partner with other private ISPs like WCBT or GWI. And the important thing to realize on the Phytium ones is a lot of those areas were greatly served. Right? It was really big donut holes, and you really just needed to get the edges, on the piece. And so that's why that kind of structure made made made sense in those areas.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Yep. So there's a couple of testimonials here, and you may have seen these before, but we've put these up really just to put on the record and remind everyone why we're doing what

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: we're doing. Right. It was really big donut hole. Okay.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Those two or three don't know.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Yeah. I'm hungry. Yes.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Yes. Someone's hungry. Yeah. So you can read those testimonials, but, you know, again, we spend all day focused on what we're building and trying to make sure that we're we're building and getting to the last mile and having the appropriate quality and having the appropriate financial controls. And, basically, we focus all day on what we're building, and so it's nice to reflect sometimes about why we're doing what we're doing. What are some of the effects we're having on on people and the ability to work from home? One of my favorite customers in my district is a level three residential care facility. And when we were first building out, they were contacting us practically desperate because they were trying to have calls at the state. They're trying to upload documents, and it just wasn't working in the DSL that they had. And so for them, it's been absolutely transformative. And you just imagine that that's a story that I happen to know, but I'm sure that there's many others that I don't know. So this is

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: why we're doing what we're doing. I think one of the other nice things about the formation of the CUDs and the impact of what the legislature really created is that we really spurred the private providers to go in and invest in anything that was anywhere remotely, you know, had a decent business case. They went in and got it done so that, you know, because they knew that otherwise we were gonna go in and get it done. And so that's made a big difference. So this next slide, this is where we were five years ago in terms of fiber. And so you can see a lot of EC fibers built out with fiber, some VTal

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: What color color is different. What?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Oh, right. Sorry. So, yeah, sorry. So, the blue is fiber and the green is cable and the gray is unserved. So, that was what we were trying to do. So, you can see how much gray is throughout the district there. And in 2020, the next slide I'm gonna show you is 2025. It has the same colors and then also pink. So that's how much fiber has been built out. I mean, that's What amazing. The massive amount of build out that's occurred in the state in just four years.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sorry. What's the pink?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: I'm sorry. And the pink is what is in progress. So those

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: are

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: funded areas. So for hours on the east, which is block, but that whole east section is our USDA reconnect grant and we've got a community connect grant down here. There's some ARPA funding inside of our district as well as the Northwest ARPA funding in those core towns. So, the rest of what is in here, the rest of the gray lines are what will be covered by, you know, B, by the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Fund. We're waiting for the final from Mentia. And

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: one more thing, if you could just go back. I think what what really strikes me about this map is that you look at I mean, just to amplify what Christa said earlier, that if you look at Burlington, for example, there's some fiber, but there's a lot of gazel. And if you look at the states where all fiber is is where AC fiber have been doing this for a really long time, and then now you go forward and you can see all the little towns that previously only had cable, now they also had fiber. So it's exactly as Christa said, that it wasn't so CUDs didn't build all this. As a matter of fact, we built precious small amounts of this in the last couple of years, but the fact that we were building and the fact that we're here spurred that private investment. So it's it's it's a great success story of the policy working to be able to not only start up CDs and get them to the point of being able to move on to the next stage, but also to spur that private investment. So we got universal service, so we're we're getting it a lot faster than it would be if CDs had to build every mile ourselves with the funding we've had.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: And I'll take slight hummerge with, you know, that small. I mean, for any case, EVAP reached this year 1,200 miles of network. So we've built a ton and that's 10,000 passing. So that speaks to the rurality of what we're building too. And we're now at over 2,000 customers.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: That's And that's a great point because there's about 2,500 miles that's been funded and so practically half of that is in Christa's district. And she's probably seen the the least of private providers coming and filling in because of the rurality and the the poor business cases.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: That map, that's everybody's fiber, Charters and Comcast. That's correct.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Yep. All providers.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Well, Charter and Comcast are good.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: But they do have some fiber that's not so anything that was submitted to the FCC as being fiber provided is blue on here. And there are most of them are green for Charter and, Comcast, but some of

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: their most recent stuff is listed as blue. So commit communication by fiber may be better, but cable is still adequate.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Well, cable is just so these so the US Treasury has defined broadband or I'm not not sure if it was them originally, but the the treasury definition of broadband is a 100 megabits per second down and 20 megabits per second up, which is not symmetrical. And the reason for that is that cable is using it's using a different technology where you get your download speeds are faster than your upload speeds. So it's from back in the day, the Internet was mostly you know, you use it for entertainment and watching things, and nowadays, you wanna be on a Zoom call. It needs to actually be bidirectional in both ways. So, I mean, is a 100 over 20 broadbands? I mean, that's that's that's probably a matter of philosophical debate. What we can say is that it is not it's not it's not symmetrical, and that's especially if you reach a capacity where too many people are using it at once and it slows down, the fact that it's that the upload is not as fast as the download can really create

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: problems. So

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Another a $100.20 is the minimum, but you can get faster than that on cable perhaps depending on the number of amplifiers or or whatever the situation. You've answered what I needed to to know.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Yeah. But, I mean, it is it is a good point. There's there's a theoretical maximum speed that technologies can have. In order to see those speeds, you not only need to have that infrastructure, but you need to be managing things properly upstream. I mean, it's possible to take a fiber network and have it not see the symmetrical gig speeds that it's capable of if things aren't managed properly upstream. So but that's it's a it's a very solvable problem. Right? And it's much easier to solve when you have that symmetrical infrastructure.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I was just gonna ask whether you anybody knows if the cable companies are are converting the fiber as well over time.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: So the cable companies are currently building fiber out in the areas where they're building. They're not They're not building more core eggs. Correct. Yep. So when Comcast came in in an area that we were about to build and built out, they built out fiber. And the I think the the thought process is they know that that's the future. Yep. And so as they're replacing network, they'll continue to, you know, upgrade their network. Now they won't be able to go in because their entire network isn't on the same, you know, type of system. They won't be able to maximize what fiber can do in an all fiber network.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Mhmm.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: You know, until much, know, farther down the road. Right. Right. Yeah.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: And it is actually amazing when you think about these technologies. That's telephone service. We then use those same lines for DSL service. First, they were never designed, and the cable was originally rolled out for entertainment and getting, yeah, getting TV into our homes. Right? And now we started using that decades ago for the Internet as well. So, I mean, fiber is really if you think about it, like, the first purpose built the reason to get fiber to a home is broadband, and then the other things come on top of it. So it's a little bit of a switch in that way. But to Christa's point, you know, the industry recognizes where there's a business case. This is actually the best technology. There's not always a business case, but where it is, this is best.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I guess I was just wondering if if if if the cable companies who sort of declared an intention to migrate to fiber. Seems that way. Okay.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: We just wanted to take the time to appreciate everything that you have done because it is that map that you just saw is because of the work that the legislature has done. So, formation of the CUDs under Chapter 82 that was spearheaded by EC Fiber and then the formation of the Vermont Community Broadband Board in 2021, and that really enabled, you know, the use of those ARPA funds, the decision to invest in the infrastructure of our state, and that is that that is a long term, you know, fifty, sixty year infrastructure investment. The merger legislation was super important. Passing it in the time frame that you did was ideal for any broadband and CV fiber, and it has been we are a really strong COD because of that merger. We have grown year over year from three employees to six to 12 to 26. And so we are, you know, proud of what we're doing and the fiscal responsibility that we've been able to to bring to it in that growth. And then in 2024, you know, enabled the match funding for the Bead program, which was a $30,000,000 match for any federal grant. So we've we've used that to help us do our USDA reconnect grant, which is in that Essex County area that oh, there's no map up there anymore. Sorry. And and it it was absolutely critical for our participation in BEAT. And so we're still waiting anxiously for that, but these things have happened because of you. So thank you.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Can you just remind the committee what BEAT is, how the feds have changed it, and what the Vermont

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: It's

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: the reapplication process and where we are now. Not in-depth, but just set the stage for us.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Yes. And I think Christine is probably also gonna cover that. So

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Oh, okay.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Well, we can Yeah. So where is that were you planning to cover it?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Or okay. Alright. Never mind.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Is it better to wait?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Go. I

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: will say that so the Northeast Kingdom and Central Vermont, we had more than 50% of the addresses in Bead. So more than 50% of the addresses that were eligible for funding were in our Communications Union District, which is now 72 towns. So, Bead was really critical for our area. And as the provisionary provisional awardee awaiting, you know, the final from NTIA, We did find ourselves in negotiating positions after, you know, the bid as a result of the benefit of the bargain round that went into play. But we have, you know, found a way to make it happen, and I hope put forward something that the NTIA is going to approve. And we intentionally made the decision to invest and to commit to invest our own match. So in addition to the state match, we've committed to $10,000,000 of our own funding, which will come sort of at the end of the line as it's needed, but we've committed to that. And that showed I think that was really important to show that we have skin in the game and that this isn't all publicly funded, and the business case is is excellent for that. There's no there's no issue. So Can

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: you remind us what MTIA stands for?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: National Telecommunications and Information Information Authority. Administration. Administration. Yeah.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: They are the ones that will approve the Bead.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: They approve Bead, and then, it has to also get approved by NIST. National Institute for Standards. Standards and technology. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Real quick. Acronym soup. And just for the record, BEAD is broadband equity access and deployment, which is the next round of federal funding. And unlike ARPA, which is very flexible, this is not flexible. And the set of rules under the Biden administration changed under the Trump administration. So it's been so many years we've been working on this thing that we know this acronym. It's, like, embedded into our brains, but that should orient you as to what we're talking about there.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yep. Rep Kleppner. Where are you gonna get $10,000,000?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: So we, would do it the same way that c v the EC Fiber has done it through revenue bond financing. So we received a commitment letter from KeyBank for doing that revenue financing. They were, you know, quite comfortable with that number and and willing to to commit to that. So and again, we'll use it to the degree that it's necessary, so to the degree that we don't need contingencies or, you know, things like that that will help lower it.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: And you can service that with revenue from your customers? Exactly.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: I know.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sibilia?

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Just on this point, and, ma'am, sure I want to apologize for coming in late, not doing my disclosure. They serve on the VCBB board appointed by the CUDs, so just to get that out there. But to this point, when we passed the legislation, we were really intentional and expected that CUDs would need to borrow and debate at this point of obligation or revenue bonds. And I think you all are the first ones to look at this. Is that right?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: You need to decide CC fiber in terms of revenue bonds? Yes. I know. So forgot. First baby. First baby. Yes.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. We owe 70,000,000. So

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: And if if I might, since I have the floor, I just wanna remind the committee, the folks that are in this room represent literally hundreds of volunteers, Vermonters, that have stood up this infrastructure, to ensure that, the failures of the market in rural Vermont, the failures of the private industry to build out to a lot of our consumers, these folks really have stood this up and they've happened. So it's it's an excellent grassroots bottom off story.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: It's a huge difference in the towns where there's no key there's been no investment by the private network. Right? Because there really is nothing there. And so when you have a CUD that believes in public infrastructure and reinvest the profits back into those communities, whether it's in the form of new infrastructure, repair and maintenance, or creating more affordability and lowering prices. And so I think the by taking our tax dollars and have made this move into putting them into public entities, we're protecting those tax dollars down the road to be reinvested and reinvested rather than a one time investment. And I think that's the

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Yep. And our next slide is talking a little bit about well, this is the road ahead. It's also what comes next. Yeah. So go back

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: to oh, sorry.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Back to this one. But just on that point, so any KCV has been doing it for a very long time. Some of you may remember the affordable connectivity program that the federal government funded, $30 a month for eligible households to be able to afford the cost of Internet. And so a number of Us CDs, including EC Fiber, if I'm not mistaken, have grandfathered in people who qualified for that have been self funding it ever since the federal funding went away. And since Maple Broadband, we've been working, and it's one of the things that we're actually announcing today is that our governing board is has approved funding for us to not only continue that, but to expand it and to qualify new households. And so that's, again, an example of even the small size that we are, we have the budget to be able to do that given the assumptions we have and but, you know, we can always evaluate it over time. But that commitment to affordability is really important because if the infrastructure is there and people can't afford it, again, as not for profit municipal entities, that is not great for us. You know, we feel like the job is not done. If it's there, people can't afford to use it. Yep. So the road ahead, I mean, obviously, like, that's that's a little bit of another layer. But, you know, first thing is we need to make sure that we have we we finish the job of universal service and make sure it is actually available on the road. And so we have the CDs, d v fiber, EC fiber, Maple Broadband, any KCV, and Northwest Fiber Works. All of us are continuing to expand. Three of us are provisional winners under need, and that will that will enable that to continue when that finally all comes through. And then Lamoille Fiber Nets, Otter Creek CD, and Southern Vermont CD are all in the stage of project closeout and sustainability. So those are the CDs that have partnered with Vidyo. And so, again, a little bit of a different model. That's their they've they've achieved universal service, and they're now getting to that point of what's next. So we've been talking about the broadband equity and access deployment program a little bit as well. I think nothing really more to say there. And Tiapakuta is continuing continuing to work with CUDs to collaborate. And it's interesting that, you know, as we're all starting to get into this process of being not only starting up, but getting further down the road, we're able to have collaboration conversations around things like how are we doing marketing and what can we learn from each other that's before didn't really make sense because we're all very different stages.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Oops.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: Okay. So here's some of our legislative priorities or considerations going forward. I mean, the like, first and foremost is that what the legislature set out your strategy a couple years ago as Presta covered. It's it is working. It's we're not done yet, but it's working. So the first thing again is really just to thank you and to, you know, encourage you to to stay the course and continue what's already been started. So we need to receive that NTIA by by we actually in the Broad Band Board, needs to receive approval from the relevant federal agencies in order to get the BEAT funding released and to enable all the provisional awardees, which are some CDs and some private companies as well, to be able to get the money to finish the job and get to the end of the roads. And in general, again, we're we're working on getting the broadband out to the roads, but in order to the the last the last 100 feet is its own challenge. So having the broadband available doesn't really mean a lot if you can't get it to the house. And so one of the things, for example, is to the degree that there's new housing developments, it would be really great to ensure that the property developers or, or individuals who are building households are aware that there are CUDs and coordinate with CUDs. It's so much cheaper to be able to connect a home or to put into conduits and underground conduits to be

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: to get fiber to a property if you do that when it's being built rather than after the fact. Yes. Can't emphasize enough how important it is to put the infrastructure into building complexes and houses before and as it's being built rather than having to come out of the woods. It also helps promote competition by doing that, and many of the CUDs have committed to, you know, helping fund some of that. So as you see legislation around housing and things like that, really encourage you to consider or speak with your, you know, fellow legislators about the importance of including something like that as a pretty simple, like, condition of funding or that kind of thing. So

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: If yeah. And Christa mentioned competition, and this is this is also quite important to property developments and multi dwelling units that residents be able to have a choice. I mean, this is all all thread we could go down, but consumer choice and competition in general is really important to making sure that the market the premarket is doing its job of encouraging everyone to play nicely in the sandbox and look after the interests of the consumer. So some of the longer term challenges are we have this public infrastructure and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But, again, the affordability of digital skills and barriers to access is really quite important, both for individuals who are using it and for community anchor institutions, nonprofits, schools to make sure that's it's it's there and that we're really thinking through what does success look like for us as a society. It's a new thing to be facing a situation in a world where everyone has access to broadband, but is it affordable? Are they using it? Are they using it safely? What are

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: the

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: cybersecurity considerations? There's a lot of work to be done here, and part of it

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: is even just starting with hello. Starting with Hey.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: You can speak to Grant.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: With a shared understanding of what does success look like and then how do we do that. Because to some degree, it's a little bit of a similar thing if our job is to with amongst a pretty small number of organizations that are building telecommunications infrastructure, but starting to think about making sure that it's effectively used for the maximum benefit of society. That's a that's a much broader collaborative conversation. So that's where we're starting to think about. Yeah. And that's pretty much all I have to say about that.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: There appears to be somebody in the waiting room.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: It could very well be. I'm

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: not sure

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: if we're

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Yeah. We're supposed to admit them. Supposed to admit them or Oh, I'm not sure who that it is, so I'm not

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: going to. Let's not. Yeah. Okay. Because actually, I don't know. Is somebody else coming with you that would be joining online?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: They'll be joining online. Heron Herzog and JB.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: JB. JB. Okay. Yeah. Yep. That's who it is.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Is that

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: That's who it is.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: We okay.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Great. Thanks for checking. Yep. And so we're pretty

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: much done. So this final slide is just a reminder of what Laura had mentioned sorry. Representative Sibilia had mentioned earlier that, you know, we sit here as staff of CVDs, and so we're we're paid to do this. But we have so many volunteers that sit in our governing boards and meet in those things. And I think about my executive committee, for example, we meet twice a month for an hour and a half, and a number of them spend time outside of that meeting as well. It's a tremendous dedication of time and energy and blood, sweat, and tears by volunteers from our towns from the grassroots that are dedicated to the mission of what we're doing here. So it's important to remember that then acknowledge those people as well.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Yeah. And the time that they put into going into their communities, you know, speaking to them, developing that interest, helping people understand the options.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Victoria? Yeah. I just saw the board. With the mergers, the boards were gonna be really big. I'm just curious how that's working.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sure. So

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: so we are now 72 towns, which means we have 72 voting members on our governing board, and we have roughly that number as alternates. So there's, you know, 120 to 140 people at any given point in time. Part of what we did was we delegated more authority to the executive committee on behalf of the governing board. So, the executive committee consists of 11 board members. We have a county representation, so to make sure that there was diversity and representation on the board. So each county that has more than two towns in our district, which is five counties each have a representation of their their person, and so they work with all the towns that are in their district to keep them more updated, make sure, you know. And so that's been part of it. Then what happens is that the executive committee reports to the governing board what it did, and then the governing board has the opportunity not to change it because that would get us in a whole, you know, contractual mess, but it had the opportunity to comment on it and to, you know, sort of approve it in a in so to speak. So, yeah, that's how we've managed to navigate that. Because it was really and honestly, many of our board members, they're like, look, there's so much here. I can't keep up with it. You know, like, having asking 72 people to keep up with everything that we're doing and the, you know, five different federal funding grant sources in thousands of miles, it's like, it's too much. So, in addition to the 11 person executive committee, I also have a check-in team, which is a subcommittee of four, which is my chair and vice chair and two other two of the county representatives that I use to just check-in with them. It keeps them up to date. We identify what needs to go up to the next level. So I think we found a good way to govern it and Nick's done a fantastic job, which I am super grateful for.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Thanks you guys for being here. Really appreciate your testimony. Why don't we take a minute to swap out seats and admit folks who we know who they are from the Zoom room. And we're going to welcome our guests. If you guys are comfortable introducing yourselves, So this is the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee. And today we're doing a little bit of digital infrastructure. So we're taking testimony on broadband and we're checking in with our communication union districts, have been busy at work rolling out broadband fiber all over the state, which is pretty awesome. So if you guys are comfortable, if you could introduce yourselves. I recognize a few fun friends. So I'm Jillian Joyce. I'm a teacher

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: at Berenberg Academy and here with

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: a group of students, part of the Climate and Economy Youth Lobby Day.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Jen Law, also a teacher at Berenberg Academy. Brooksville, I'm a student at Bramberg.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And I'm a student

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: at Bramberg. I've a major She meets Evelyn, I'm a student as well. And I see Emily, I'm also a student.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: I'm also a student.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Awesome. I see. So you guys are all BBA. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But thank you for being here. This is so fun. I wanna make sure I connect with you guys before Yeah. Before you take off. Thank you for being here, and we are returning to our testimony. We are now gonna hear from the Vermont Community Broadband Board. We're gonna get a bit of an annual report and talk a little bit about your recommended budget for FY '27. We have to do our due diligence as the oversight committee. Welcome. If you could introduce yourself for the record, we're happy to have you here.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. My name is Christine Halkwist. I'm the Executive Director for the Vermont Community Broadband Board. I was appointed by the governor in July 21. And I'm very proud of the progress that the CODs have made as you've just heard. We'll talk more about where we're headed. Herren Herzog will be running the presentation. And next slide, Herren. If you look at the progress of where we are, we've got commitments. We're actually, this year we're focusing on every single remaining address in the state. The past years, we were looking at how do we get to the areas? Now, we don't want to end the year and have somebody say, Yeah, but I didn't get this. So, we're down to less than 1% of the addresses that we need to look at. And we're actually down to half of 1%. And we're looking at every address and saying, How are we going to get there? I'm sorry, how many addresses is that half percent? That half percent represents about 1,800 addresses. 1,800, the last 1,800. About 315,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Could you say let's just say that number again for the record. Sorry. This is it's remarkable work. 315,000 addresses, and we are down to the last 1,800 that don't have access to fiber?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: No, we haven't identified how they're gonna get access. So Yeah, it's we're not there yet, but we've got all those locations funded and we're looking at the last half of 1%. It is kind of like the eightytwenty principle. The amount of work you have to do for those remaining addresses is almost the same as you had to do to get to the rest because some of these addresses are located. I should say we're also including off grid addresses as the B program requires. Act 71 was on grid, but B requires us to look at off grid as well. Nice when government works. And we're here to present the annual report. I won't take you through the detail as to what the requirements are, but we're here to tell you about the budget, the progress, and how we're ensuring, and you see one line there, we're talking about every single E911 locations. So in the executive summary, next slide. So as you've heard, we're continuing to have statewide progress through universal and reliable broadband. That we've responded to some major shifts, and I'll talk about that later. We had a program that was in place. All the states were working on it for three years. We got a new administration, a new set of terms and conditions in June. And we all scrambled to make the adjustments. I'll talk about, we're very proud of you that we had funding. We still had federal funding allowing us to do an affordable long drop program, which I'll also talk about. And of course, be happy to answer any questions you have. So as you heard, we will get to every address as we lever up 100 over 20. The vast majority are expected to be fiber optic internet. If you look at where we'll end up, I'll get to the point where percentages of where we'll end up later in the presentation. But we are gonna get to the majority of the addresses. And you asked the question earlier about cable. Cable is ultimately migrating to fiber optic because fiber optic is by far the least expensive infrastructure. It's about oneten the cost of cable long term in terms of operation maintenance. So the technology is evolving in front of us. So any of those cable locations will evolve the fiber over time. There will be some locations that will need to serve with satellite. That actually is part of the requirements of the B program, which we'll talk about that in a minute. It's available statewide already. But the B program actually provides some incentives for that. I talked about plans are in place. And again, our focus this year is really every single location. And we've a great GIS mapping team that's looking at every single location. Next slide. Executives. Next slide. So one of the things that we're disappointed was that with the new administration, we actually had funding for a digital equity program, digital power program. We had a $5,300,000 grant. And as you heard earlier from the presentation, the importance of giving people the tools to use the network was what this program was about. It was about providing the training, the hardware, and the tools for those people that are on the other side of the digital divide. Because we know and the data clearly shows that if you're on the wrong side of the digital divide, you're on the wrong side of the economic divide as well. So it really wasn't We're highly disappointed. However, we're still continuing with what we can with that program. We are working on a device program working with partners. So we've scrambled to figure out how we can continue parts of that program with very little or no funding. And I'll talk briefly about the affordable long drop program. You're familiar with the housing situation and the aging demographics of our state. Many of our folks are on fixed incomes, and yet they have houses that might have been built several thousand feet from the main line. The good news is we've provided $8,000,000 in funding to allow people to get connected. We call it the affordable long drop program. We're focusing on the lowest income people first to be able to say, you can't get active because you can't afford to provide the drop, then we'll fund that drop. And you're looking at typical drop could be $2,000 as high as $5,000 So you might have somebody who's a low income, can't get connected because they can't afford the drop.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Remind me, sorry, remind me what drop

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: means.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So I live right in town. When Phytium came through, just boop.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yes. This is for Yeah, that boop was the drop. That was the drop. That was the drop, yeah.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So how far does the boop have to be for it not to be seamless like it was for me?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Well, in general we say 400 feet. However, even 400 feet can be It depends on the provider, but generally we're paying for the first 400 feet anyhow.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And then beyond that is It on the

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: will be funded through the affordable long drop fund.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: For income eligible for Morrow.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So, if

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: you're low income and you can't afford

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: We're even going into medium income, low and medium income. I'm just not providing it to the high end people. If got a $3,000,000 home and you're making a couple 100,000 a year, we won't plug it for you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Probably pick up that tab. It's

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: not on poor

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: people's edge. I'm wondering what the income levels are and how you verify them.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: The CODs are responsible for verifying, and they're typically working with agencies to do that. Okay. With community action agencies, people like that? And self verification. And

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: self verification. We

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: provide the for low income, we use the community action agencies to do the same system that they're doing. And so they do it for us, we we pay them for that process. And then we don't have to take on that personal information and all those things. That's good. And those folks also get discounts on their overall bill. Yep. And then the folks that will qualify into the program but are above that 200% of poverty line, they'll do a self attestation that on their contract that identifies that they don't earn above the limits. Yeah. Great price.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: And we're also doing we started a pilot with a device donation program where we're working with larger institutions to when their devices when they replace their devices, we're working with partners to get those devices cleaned and upgraded so that we can provide those to people who are low income or on the other side of the industry and can't afford those devices. So we're doing that as well. Program was we had to really reduce the size of it because of the affordability issue. That was meant to be a major program of individual equity, but we're still carrying it out. We figured out ways to do it with partners. Next slide. So to give you some details about what the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program has, it was $42,500,000,000 provided nationwide in order to build infrastructure. And it was really targeted towards fiber optic as a priority under the previous administration. So with that, if you look nationwide, the majority of that money was going to fund fiber optic. With the new administration, that changed to where many of the states are doing a large percentage of satellite. What they said is, the previous administration understood that satellite was not a priority investment. It was understood that satellite was not considered broadband. The new administration labeled satellite as broadband.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yes. I was just gonna ask if you could remind us, we talked about this last year maybe, you or the broadband board, why we don't consider satellite to be. Well, the problem is If you get a minute to remind me of that, I'm sorry.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah, I'll be happy to talk about it. There's two problems with satellite. One is you have to communicate to satellites with a radio frequency. It has limited ability to transmit data. So the numbers are if you get more than seven people per square kilometer on it, you can't get the speeds. In addition to Vermont, we look at it over half of our locations would not be able to get access because of the heavy tree cover. So tree cover and geographic depressions get in the way of that signal. You have to have a 115 degree clear view of the sky in order to reflect towards. So the other thing that happened with the changes in June was there were labor and workforce requirements and climate resilience and other things that were dropped as part of the program. So we got through all the rounds of the benefit of the bargain round as it's called. And at this point, we're waiting to hear from the NTI that we're one of 14 states remaining that have not yet heard, but we're cautiously optimistic. We've been having some positive meetings. In fact, the governor has been very supportive And the governor and the DCPD tended to meeting with Ariel Roth last month work through some of the final issues. So next slide. We talked about the Affordable Long Drought Program. I guess I'm gonna say more about that. But the key is, key to qualify is any of the providers have to have a universal service plan to qualify. So we'll get into our operation and financial statements And then we'll get back to the CUDs after this statement, because I know you asked for us to provide you information. Yeah, thank you. So next slide. These are our administration and operation cost expenditures. I wanna make it clear, are using federal and other money and not state funds for these programs. If you look at the original Act 71 legislation, it allowed us to use $1,500,000 of state money for admin. We've been careful to avoid using that. And we are not going to use that. So when you look at these numbers, none of these are state funds. So I won't go through the details on this slide, but if you look at the personnel costs from 2025 to '26 changes due to healthcare and wage increases are the only changes that are occurring there. Okay, next slide. So we'll get into the budget reports here. Next slide. So what changes we've made, if you look at the funding from federal dollars and special dollars, what we've done is you see that $700,000 reduction. That is an adjustment that we made to put more of the cost into the federal funding side, out of the special funds. We have USF funding, universal service funds, and we want to try to preserve as much as possible for some of these special programs. So we've taken as much as we can and reallocated to what we're allowed to in terms of our administrative costs, in terms of federal programs. Sorry, again, the USF fund, that's a federal funding stream. Yes. Well, it's statewide charge that's done on the phone. It's a telecom fund.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: But it's a state funding, in fact. Yeah. Okay.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: But it's not a general funding.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Right. It's a dedicated grant. Okay.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's helpful. Thanks.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So next slide. If you look at the, you're looking at special dollars and federal dollars. These are grant funds that are going be used to complete the CPF capital projects fund is where those funds are coming from in order to that's money that's being used to fund the COVs to build infrastructure, that $43,000,000,000 And then next slide, that kind of is a summary that shows what we've done. We've taken 700,000 out of special funds. We've put it into federal funds. And again, of this is coming from state funds. And you have in your packet all the details. Great. I assume if you have any questions on that, we've got JB, but I was assuming that you probably wouldn't have any questions on the details considering.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I don't know. Who's our approach? Dara, is that you or is that Scott? Who does broadband board for our budget letter? Great. Scott may have questions for you.

[Ellie De Villiers (Executive Director, Maple Broadband; Chair, VT CUD Association)]: We

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: have a couple weeks before we have to deliver our budget recommendation letter to house appropes. We were told this year that we definitely need to make sure that we're understanding every budget area that we oversee and you guys are in that. Okay. So so we just wanna make sure we have at least a paragraph or or two indicating that we understand how your budget works, you know, that we've satisfied any questions we might have. I think this is a great start and committee members and or Rep. Campbell can follow-up with any questions.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yep, I'd be glad to meet you, Scott.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I have one clarification. I was talking about your universal service fund. There is there are both federal and state universal tax lines. That's right. And I think that your budget is is only out of the Vermont universal service line. I'm not 100% sure about that, but the federal universal service line goes to reducing bills for low and middle folks. Desire desire to fall. That takes what's happened there. Okay.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So I think I'll be glad to be with Scott offline.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That'd be great. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So why don't we skip right to

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Scott, did you catch all

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: that?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. Why don't we skip right to contracts, Harrison? Because this is probably something you should be aware of, is what contracts we have and why we're dealing with that. Okay, excellent. For the kind of budget, we're talking about, assuming we get beat, we're talking over a half $1,000,000,000 in grant funds. So we're managing that with a small group of 10. But we do that because we do a lot of contractual work with specific organizations. The key is if you look at CTC Technology, they provide us engineering services. Allie, you have just met, she works with some When we're trying to provide advice to the COD, she helps us with We've got our government affairs person. Luck Grove does an inspection. Before we finalize a grant, we do a final inspection and we ensure that it meets all the specifications that are required that we have set forth with the board has established what are called outside plant requirements. We ensure that they comply with that before we close out. We've got some of you may be familiar with Lucy Rogers. She's been a great subject matter expert. We did some work to look at creative financing services, but that kind of went away with the contracts change. And RSM have helping us with the digital equity program and the Bead program. Stone Environment is our GI services. And we did some high quality videos with multiple films, if you may have seen.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: From Southworth? I

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Southworth]: see only one career center where you're doing apprenticeship programs.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah, Do you have others

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: or ones to do it?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: No, they're the key. They do it for the entire state. We've had a very successful apprenticeship program, I should say. We have a pre apprenticeship program. We've been working on this for years. Thanks for asking that question. I'll brag about that. Our pre apprenticeship programs are very successful. We've worked with North Country Career Center, and I want to thank Christopher for helping take the lead on that. And what we've done is we've worked with the fiber optic companies to say, if we put you through this pre apprenticeship program, if we put people through this, will you take them and put them right to work? So we've had about 70% placement on that program. So our graduates, we take 12 at a time. We put them through a three week training program, which includes pole climbing. If you look what happens with people going into this, about half of them fall out because they don't realize they can't work from heights. So we developed a specific program working with the fiber optic companies to say, what are the skills you're looking for? And we developed that program and it's been very successful.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Can I just follow-up?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, sorry, you go. So

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: you say that the North Country Career Center, which I'm very familiar

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: with, does statewide. Yes. How does that work?

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Well, we mean through other tech centers?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yes. Caledonia? Yes. We work with other tech centers. A couple of them have been given at the Association of General Contractors that are right outside of Mount Baylor. Great.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Thank you for that.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That was my question. Whether students had to be you know, in the North Country Career Center region, but it sounds like students from all over the state.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. Yeah. We're funding the program. Great. So yep.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: And we're one of the so one of the main trainers for the program is works directly for us, and so we give him that time off as part of our tradition to it. But it's also the process that we're in right now, that North Country's in right now, is getting that next train, the trainer that can work farther south. So most of them have been done, as Christine said, in the Montpelier area or in the Newport area, but the next round we should have another trainer that can get down into farther south and work with some of the other CUDs and contractors. Great.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So we're gonna give you an overall CUD update and try not to retell some things that have already been told from but we'll provide some different perspectives. So next slide. So we had nine CUDs, two sixteen Vermont towns. And this is really remarkable success as a result of the legislation that was put in place by the legislature in 2015, allowing two or more towns to get together to form a municipal district. It's unique to Vermont. We're the only state that's done this. And it's been an envy of my peers, my state broadband peers, because of the level of engagement that we have as a result of this. The public engagement has been pretty amazing. The other states have struggled with public engagement. We've mastered that thanks to this legislation. Christopher Morrow?

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Can you remind me what happens in the 40 towns that are labeled as none?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah, those 40 towns that are none, they have service already essentially. Okay. Which is why they didn't

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: I see.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Join the senior base.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: So if you look at the district center construction is complete, oh, I wanna remind you, we have more than 400 volunteers across the state, as Laura had pointed out earlier. I think we take great pride that just the number of volunteers working on this is something we all can be proud of. If you look at the CODs where construction is complete, Southern Vermont, Otter Creek, Lamoille, Chittenden County, and EC Fiber. Construction ongoing is Northwest, DV fiber, Maple Broadband, and any case CV. And as Christopher pointed out, over half of the remaining addresses go into any case CV, which I'm going to really praise you for all of your great work. That's the next slide. I want to talk about the fact. If you look at any KCV, and the fact that they're serving 72 towns, they're serving the hardest territory in the state. They're serving the Northeast Kingdom. And I just want to brag about any KCV. Problem. This slide shows that they continue to meet or exceed their goals, which is not a small feat when you think of what they're trying to serve. So I think when you look at any case CV and the CDS, our collective work has resulted in tremendous success. And thank you, Christopher, for being such a great leader on this. So this is about the customer counts, how many are getting connected. And you can see that they're constantly right where they should be. And the customer is determined, you heard Christa say earlier on, she'll fund some of the mesh through her customer revenue. And if she's meeting her goals, she will be able to afford to do that. So we work very closely with the CODs. We meet with them monthly to review their performance. And then quarterly they provide a written report to our board. We have a standard report where we look at number of miles that you've constructed versus what you've committed to construct, number of passings, the number of houses you pass or residents you pass and businesses compared to what you committed to. And then of course, finally, what we call your take rate. How many customers are actually how many people on those passings are actually taking the service. And that number of customer count is what really determines the long term business success of the COD. And so this count right there, you look at the one fundamental measure of success, that customer count is a key measure. And then if you look at the next slide, which is the recurring revenues, which is also tied directly to the number of customers that are connected. Question

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: about that.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, Richard did that.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: The number of customers has been going steadily up in the previous slide, on this slide, it's flattened to out September, October, I

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: have a question. Was wondering what explains Yeah. You wanna explain that?

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Sure. So the the reason that that occurs is because of seasonal disconnects through the winter. Oh, I see. And then people will come back on. So we, you know, we have a reduced revenue that we receive during the winter.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So seasonal households that disconnect for the winter? Yeah. Got

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: it. Interesting.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, that was interesting.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: And then the next slide is kind of a summary to show where they are.

[Christa Shute (Executive Director, NEK Broadband & CVFiber; Secretary, VT CUD Association)]: Oh yeah, you can skip over that one. Well, not sure why it's there.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Well, essentially it shows that you can, yeah, you can do it, it's fine. $1,900,000 versus a forecast of 1.89, so I think you're pretty good. Yeah. And then the next slide shows the miles that are built. Then finally, let's talk in general about the benefits and where we go from here. It's one thing to get the network built, but it's the other thing is why are we building it? And we're building it to improve the lives of Vermonters. So if we look at the different programs that are benefiting from this and we talk about, I will talk briefly about fiber versus other technologies, Especially with artificial intelligence coming along, the world is investing in fiber. Fiber is almost a limitless technology. If you look at the ability of one fiber the size of human hair to carry out the amount of data it can carry, you could almost say this is infinite. And I visited a facility that was bringing in the fiber, undersea cable fiber, from all across these different countries. Fiber cables that ran 4,000 or 5,000 miles. Huge facility with all these computers running, but you went to where it came in and it looked like those little conduits that you have at your house.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's wild.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. So this whole network, because these fibers are so small, can provide almost infinite amount of data. And fiber is a very reliable connection. You actually fuse the glass together. And of course, doesn't degrade. So if you look at the other technologies such as cable, where you have twisted connections that degrade over time, fiber is a superior technology, which is why the cable companies are moving to fiber because they don't have those longer term maintenance issues that are in the common sense. I'm proud to say we're leading the nation in terms of per capita number of people we're getting fiber to. So if you look at public safety, when we talk about the E9, you might have heard in past about E911 issues. Many of those issues were related to the fact that you had only one copper feed to what they call a slick site. Now we've got redundant fiber going to these sites. So from a public safety standpoint, your E911 services are gonna be much more reliable. From a climate standpoint, positioning with fiber really enables the whole smart grid and allows you greater penetration of renewables. From a health standpoint, with the closing of our rural health clinics, telehealth becomes even more important. Workforce, of course, look at like this, we've had a very successful program in bringing people into the fiber optic, is you will go from there. You can go into any of the other technical fields which we're working on as well. What are these paths that you can go from starting out as a fiber optic technician? More importantly is how does this benefit our rural towns? Once you get fiber, if you go back to what we earlier talked about in '21, we talked about the fact that we can attract high intellectual margin businesses to our rural communities, which kind of can see county, of course. Education is moving towards the use of fiber for AI. And then farming, the amazing thing about farming is we talk about phosphorus runoff through the application of smart technologies in your farms. You're able to do topical application of your nutrients, is shown to be greater than a 30% reduction in nutrient application. So it saves farmers money but it also protects our water levels. So if we look at our work to come, our work to come is now how do we educate Vermonters and provide the knowledge and the tools to benefit from these infrastructure investments? I have a question about the public safety.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You mentioned that. I don't think we've thought about the fact that fiber networks are designed to be redundant and and and travel in different directions if there's interruptions in some somehow. But one of the concerns that people have we've been talking also in this committee about transition from copper lines to to fiber for telephone service, for voice service, and the need for a battery backup in order to keep the LIT running when when you have an interruption in electric. I'm wondering whether you have any idea about the evolution of technology in in in that sphere. I'm I I I'm wondering about whether there are people working on reducing the electric needs of of an OIT so that so that it could run on a battery for for longer. So sometimes you have if you have a blackout in a month, it might it might last more than four hours. It might last for days. Yeah. It is Uh-huh. Are you aware of of any evolution technology in that?

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Well, like If I had my cell phone, I'd hold this up for you. And so I started my career The evolution of technology is reducing the power it needs. Yes. Just a dusty ball. When I started my career, I was designing computers for power systems for Digital Equipment Corporation with these big computers because essentially, they were only about 40% efficient at converting the electricity to information. We were able to get to the cell phone because we got to over 98% efficiency. So the same thing's happening at the OFT level. We're seeing greater and greater efficiencies occur. The CODs are focusing on providing education to their members and customers to ensure that they have the proper backup in place. Is an important thing to consider. Everybody should think about their backup needs. But it doesn't take a lot to back up an ONT for eight hours. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So I guess other than the general drift to more efficient technology, you're not aware of any particular developments in that sphere.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. Well, I'm aware the developments are happening at the NVIDIA chip level, right? So yes, they're happening. Yeah. Okay. Just curious. But we check, competitive market, if you follow NVIDIA and the others, the competitive market is driving this.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Sure. Yeah, no, no, I know. I guess that's what I have in the back of my head, thinking about how phones manage so much more data than they did even you know, eight years ago or something, and they're no bigger. And the battery lasts longer.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: And the batteries are getting

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: better too. And the batteries are getting better too. So, yeah, so it just seems like we should be getting to a point where this is becomes a nonissue, where a battery backup for an LMT is is essentially not a not a problem.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah. We we do need to continue to educate folks. Yeah. But we do but we yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: People need to be educated about the need for a veteran backup for that.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Thanks.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alrighty. Director Holquist, thank you so much for oh, rep Danny.

[Rep. Richard Bailey]: Got a couple of questions on operating or financial. Mhmm. I see we have the doubling of internal service fees. And what would cause that? A contractual went up to million dollars.

[Christine Hallquist (Executive Director, Vermont Community Broadband Board)]: Yeah, well, contractual is all part of meeting the FEED requirements. So that's all federally funded. We have a set of requirements that are put, such as permitting requirements and others that need to be complied with. Is all, all the contractual stuffs are being worked through the Bead and the capital But as far as the internal service fees, those are fees we get charged from ADS and others as well. So they're not anything we necessarily have control over. Good. Basically, tech support. Tech support. Tech support. Support. Yeah. Sure.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Hey. Director, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate your time and the information. And Rep. Campbell would will be in touch with any questions about the budget. So, if committee members have any questions about the budget, can you follow those through Rep. Campbell? And we will be back, we can go off live, and we'll be back at eleven Great,

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: thank you. Thanks everybody.