Progress on fiber-optic cable steady but slow

In January 2022 the Charlotte Selectboard voted to appropriate around $44,000 to ensure that the town was a priority among towns in getting fiber-optic broadband cable to its underserved areas.

The funds came from the American Rescue Plan Act and were just 3.5 percent of the town’s total allocation from the fund.

At the time, selectboard members, in particular Lewis Mudge, argued for the allocation so that Charlotte would be at the head of the line when it came to the fiber-optic buildout.

Two and a half years later, some people thought it would be installed sooner and are wondering in conversations, emails and on social media when they are going to get high-speed internet service.

“Does anyone know what is going on with the buildout for fiber broadband for East Charlotte?” Anthony Cowart posted. “Over a year ago someone from Waitsfield Telecom stopped by my house to see where to dig for the fiber line that will run to the house from the telephone pole in our yard. I haven’t heard anything since.”

At times the limited bandwidth has been tough, particularly during the pandemic, having enough bandwidth for everyone in his family with two sons in high school and his wife working from home.

He went on to say that his 21-year-old son decided to get his own internet provider and went with T-Mobile Home Internet, which is much faster than their current internet without fiber-optic cable, and was $50 a month.

Elizabeth Bassett, who lives in East Charlotte, said she had tried to find out when fiber-optic cable would reach her, but all she got in a phone call was “pablum speak.”

“It was a lot of words, and it was going nowhere,” Bassett said.

Charlotte has a lot of long driveways, said Kurt Gruendling, vice president of marketing and business development for Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom. Those long driveways make getting cable to everyone a labor-intensive, lengthy and costly process.

If a customer has a long driveway, they usually have underground cable. Generally, Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom matches the way utilities are already being delivered, so most of Charlotte’s homes require long underground fiber-optic installations.

“Charlotte has a higher percentage of buried customer drops (and longer drops) than many other towns we serve, which means things just take longer and are more expensive to complete,” Gruendling said.

The $44,000 in ARPA funds the town kicked in for the effort was quickly spent. For example, Gruendling said, a home on Greenbush they recently hooked up with a 4,200-foot driveway took four days for a four-person crew to run underground cables from the mainline to that home. Connecting this home cost more than $30,000.

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom pays for getting the fiber-optic connection run from its mainline to your house.

According to Gruendling, most people in East Charlotte should find themselves with the option of connecting to fiber-optic cable relatively soon, but he didn’t know exactly how long that meant. Getting fiber-optic to every area of Charlotte is a large capital construction project in a town where many lots are multiple acres and homes are widely spread apart.

To follow the progress of the fiber-optic project: getfiber.wcvt.com/front_end/zones.

Gruendling knows firsthand the frustration of waiting and wondering when fiber optic will finally get to your home. He lives just over the line in Shelburne, which is served by another company which predicts he should have fiber optic by 2027.

His next-door neighbor, just across the Charlotte line, has fiber optic now.