The plan of Vermont's Republican governor for universal statewide broadband is extremely ambitious and not very detailed.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 8, 2007]

It's a good thing that Vermont's Governor Jim Douglas (funding sources) has good advice. Douglas opened the Freedom to Connect Conference with a speech about the telecommunications component of his Vermont Way Forward (.pdf) program, which aims to deliver the internet, environmentalism, education, secure pensions, and fiscal responsiblity all at once.

Douglas was introduced by telecom industry veteran Tom Evslin (who blogged about it here). Evslin founded ITXC (a key early VoIP company) and ran AT&T's WorldNet service, so he knows the internet.

So when Vermont's governor says he plans to enable the deployment of ubiquitous broadband by 2010 at speeds of 3 Mbps symmetrical, rising to 20 Mbps symmetrical by 2013, Evslin's presence makes the claim more credible.

One attendee suggested on the conference's chat screen that those speeds should be read as 0.003 Gbps and 0.02 Gbps, respectively. Another pointed out that broadband speeds in South Korea are higher:

"This year, the average broadband speed will increase to 75Mbps per second," Dr Chin Dae-Je, South Korea's Information Minister, told a delegation of global policy leaders at a meeting of the OECD earlier this year, before adding: "I have 100Mbps in my home."

The plan
Douglas says that the plan envisages spending $40 million in public money and "leveraging $200 million in private funds." Looking at the details, however, we see that this year's spending will be $450,000 (plan, p.10).

The idea, Douglas explained, is to build the infrastructure, such as towers, but not to deploy the last mile or to provide service. He will crate a Vermont Telecommunications Authority to build and own the towers and to ensure their neutrality. "We will invest in towers and fiber; invest as little as possible in radios and lights, because that's what the private sector does."

Douglas noted that Vermont could be left behind. Verizon left the state earlier this year. In many areas, internet access is not a problem, but the poor lack access. "87 percent of Vermont has fared well," Douglas said. "But in some rural counties, only half of all households have access."

Most deployments worldwide do not aim to serve 100 percent of the population. Douglas is specifically aiming to serve the state's poorest by accepting nothing less than internet ubiquity.

Internet access can make it easy for people to telecommute from Vermont, and also helps existing businesses. Addressing his audience, Douglas said, "you no longer need to live in an urban center. This opens the door for a rural state like Vermont to be a magnet for companies that don't want to fight the rate race, that want to avoid smog and high crime."

Douglas also wants local businesses from tourism to farming to have access to internet supply chains.

Will it work?
Douglas has a good advisor, and is in a state that needs a plan (though perhaps one with a better name, a name that does not sound like one of the classic failures of the Chinese Politburo).

It is possible that the towers will be built, the dark fiber will be run, and that a significant support infrastructure for broadband deployment will be available by 2010. It is also possible that the project will be overbilled, underfunded, and delayed.

Assuming the towers get built, hooked up to power, and that the fiber is deployed, what next? Does Douglas understand the difference between a closed, resctricted system like EV-DO and the open spectrum deployments of WISPs nationwide, many of them in rural areas, and many of those with the assistance of RUS grants? We fear that this could be just another handout to the telco.

But let's imagine that the system is deployed, and let's imagine that it works without interference, and that there's actual competition, and therefore affordable prices. Douglas is imagining Vermont becoming a high tech hub with software development jobs available to all. But it's equally possible that ubiquitous internet would bring tech support and telemarketing jobs to Vermont. Douglas wants to compete with Palo Alto and Austin and Stamford, but he might end up competing with Bangalore instead.

On the other hand, the rural poor might be better served by Vermont as Bangalore than by Vermont as Silicon Valley. In the former scenario, poor people get jobs. In the latter scenario, they sell their homes at a profit and move away, fleeing back into the low cost of living of the digital divide.

We hope that the problems Vermont faces in the future are the problems associated with a successful internet deployment, but we find it easier to imagine this plan failing than succeeding, either by delivering ubiquitous $80 per month monopoly cellular broadband service, or by delivering nothing more than another large government building program with no tangible results.

Governor Douglas, please prove us wrong!

— End