Last week, the Vermont Community Broadband Board announced that the state will receive $229 million in federal funding from a White House initiative to expand high-speed broadband access. That figure is some $50 million more than state officials had anticipated — good news for the effort to wire up rural Vermont.

In the lead-up to the announcement, officials worried that Vermont would get too small a piece of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program pie. The feds doled out the money based on an internet connectivity map generated by the Federal Communications Commission, which overstated the number of Vermont households with reliable broadband connection. 

That led the Vermont Community Broadband Board to launch a campaign urging residents to look up their home on the federal commission's website, which tracked high-speed connections house-by-house and had a mechanism for challenging the findings. On June 26, state officials learned that Vermonters had won almost 11,000 challenges, each worth $3,000 to $5,000 in additional aid.

"It leaves us closer to finally achieving a goal that the state's been trying for several decades to meet," Rob Fish, deputy director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, told Seven Days. "It doesn't get us all the way there, but it gets us a lot closer than we expected to be."

As of March, roughly two-thirds of Vermont addresses lacked 100 megabits per second internet coverage; by 2027, the state wants every address to have those speeds. It's a colossal effort, expected to cost roughly $650 million.

The $229 million injection comes on top of $245 million from the pandemic-related American Rescue Plan Act.

Still, success is not assured. In a March report, State Auditor Doug Hoffer and his team raised concerns about how the effort could be tripped up. For one: Vermont is relying on communications union districts, new entities with no experience handling large expenses, to turn hundreds of millions of once-in-a-lifetime federal dollars into a web of high-speed internet connectivity.

Now it's a question of whether they can pull it off.

For rural Vermonters bypassed by for-profit internet service providers, it's a matter of equity. A lack of broadband has left them without easy access to telemedicine, remote job opportunities and virtual schooling.

Heather Peatman, who is 30, grew up in Fletcher, a small town in Franklin County, and remembers using dial-up internet at home while in high school. Even then, she said, it felt as if the town were behind.

She still lives in Fletcher, and the internet is still slow. But now she's a freelance photographer and remote manager at a health benefits company, and her lack of broadband is debilitating.

She sometimes has no choice but to call off video meetings and schlep to Burlington to upload large files. "It's the bane of my existence," Peatman said. "It's one of the biggest drawbacks to living here." 

The internet issues led the town to take matters into its own hands. By 2020, Fletcher Selectboard members had acquired about $1 million in grants and loans to build out and run their own broadband network. But after more than three years of work, they're running into problems managing the enterprise.

That's why the state is banking on communications union districts. The newly established organizations involve clusters of towns and are run by appointed representatives. They can borrow money and contract for services to build broadband.

In 2021, Gov. Phil Scott hired Christine Hallquist, a former gubernatorial candidate and veteran of the electric utility industry, to lead the Vermont Community Broadband Board and head the effort. By 2023, all but 36 towns had joined one of 10 communications union districts. 

The results, so far: About 2,216 miles of fiber-optic cable have been laid, bringing broadband into reach for roughly 30,000 households. And last month, ECFiber, a communications union district in the Upper Valley, celebrated the completion of a network that will bring high-speed internet service to 23 towns in east-central Vermont. 

But with much at stake, the Vermont Community Broadband Board has plenty to prove. Hallquist frequently remarks that the work is akin to building a plane while flying it. 

In March, Hoffer's office identified 10 major risks to completing the statewide effort, including a lack of qualified construction workers and supplies such as cable. Hoffer worried that construction projects would come to a halt if the state failed to acquire more funding. Plus, his team noted, communications union districts are being run by people with varying levels of expertise.

"You wouldn't normally put over $300 million through a brand-new structure, right?" Douglas Farnham, deputy secretary for the Agency of Administration, told Seven Days. 

The state is helping the districts navigate complex bureaucratic requirements and a completely new funding system. "The speed and nature of the undertaking has resulted, at times, in accountability and risk mitigation strategies being developed after dollars are awarded, rather than before," Hoffer's team wrote in the report.

For now, at least, it seems as if the Vermont Community Broadband Board is addressing Hoffer's concerns. On June 28, Hoffer sent out an email praising its efforts.

"I am pleased to report that the VCBB has been working its way through our report to identify steps they can take to enhance their efforts and mitigate the risks we identified," Hoffer said in the email.

 But for towns such as Fletcher that are not in a communications union district, things remain unclear. Much to the surprise of Fletcher Selectboard members, parts of the town set to be wired through local efforts will also be connected using federal funds. The feds, who contracted directly with Fidium Fiber to lay cable there, were relying on the National Broadband Map that was created before Fletcher's work. 

"What this means, essentially, is the Federal Communications Commission is using our tax dollars to build over existing fiber networks," said Jon Bondy, chair of the Fletcher Selectboard. The situation may also hinder the town's ability to pay back the loans it took out for the project.

At the same time, the Northern Border Regional Commission, one of the funders of Fletcher's project, has paused construction out of concern that the town is ill-equipped to carry out the rest of its plans. 

Peatman is frustrated and confused. "It's been really hard to get information to find out how I can be connected," she said. 

For now, though, she'll continue driving 40 minutes to the University of Vermont library in Burlington to upload files. Once there, it takes less than 10 minutes, typically, to download what she needs. At home, the same task can take five days. 

"I've lived here my entire life," Peatman said. "We love it here, but there are times where I wish I lived closer [to reliable service]. I don't want to have to sacrifice rural living for a place that has fast Wi-Fi."