Vermont CUD Northwest Fiberworx Nabs $20 Million ARPA Infusion

Northwest Fiberworx CUD logo

The popular Vermont Communications Union District (CUD) Northwest Fiberworx (NWFX) has received a $20.2 million infusion in state American Rescue Plan Act dollars to extend affordable fiber broadband into long-underserved regions of the Green Mountain State.

The St. Albans-based CUD is a nonprofit special purpose municipality with 22 member towns. Its latest build will connect 3,800 unserved and underserved households in Franklin and Grand Isle counties in the Northwest part of the state.

Great Works Internet Vermont (GWI VT) will design the network and manage the operations, though Fiberworx will own the finished build.

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Northwest Fiberworx CUD road with utility poles

“We have a unique model, that of which we will build, own and maintain a fiber-to-the-premise open-access network,” Northwest Fiberworx Network Operations Manager, Mary Kay Raymond said in a statement.

The new $20.2 million grant awarded late last month by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCCB), was made possible by 2021 federal COVID relief funding courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act.

“Northwest Fiberworx and their partner Great Works Internet Vermont have found a way to bring service where others would not,” VCBB Deputy Director Rob Fish said of the award.

“They’re building a sustainable network to serve Vermonters for decades to come.”

The VCBB states that it has already awarded $206 million in grants for rural Vermont broadband deployments. Once Northwest Fiberworx starts construction, nine of the state’s 10 CUDs will be in construction and/or actively connecting customers.

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Northwest Fiberworx CUD service territory

“Northwest Fiberworx is actively moving forward to begin preparations for construction with our partners GWI to begin deployment,” Raymoind said. “We look forward to working with each of our member communities to break the digital divide and provide an economic impact as well as providing them with high-speed internet.”

Like countless highly-rural U.S. states, Vermont residents often live under broadband monopoly – if they have access to modern broadband at all. An overall lack of broadband competition in the state ensures that what broadband that does exist tends to be expensive, slow, spotty, and feature substandard customer service.

Vermont’s rural markets average eight passed locations per mile, making fiber deployment a costly and cumbersome effort for large private providers looking for quick, short-term returns. Enter CUDs, which can help streamline collaborative deployments often impossible for individual municipalities to tackle alone.

As a recent ILSR report explores in detail, Vermont has made CUDs the centerpiece of its attempt to finally address longstanding gaps in state broadband. That began in 2015, when the state passed a law allowing the creation of CUDs, which can legally fund broadband expansions through debt, grants, and donations — but not taxes (though they are tax-exempt entities).

Those efforts continued in 2021 when the Vermont legislature passed Act 71, which ensured CUDs would play a key role in expanding affordable fiber access while taking advantage of an historic round in federal broadband stimulus funding.

In Northwest Fiberworx’s case, the finished network will be open access, meaning additional competitors can utilize the network to provide fiber services, potentially driving meaningful competition to many areas that historically had seen no broadband access whatsoever.

Inline image of utility poles along East Road in Milton, VT courtesy of Northwest Fiberworx website
 

 

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