Alburgh plans to offer fiber broadband internet to nearly all homes in town through a partnership with New Jersey-based Matrix Design Group.
Voters authorized the town selectboard to sign a memorandum of understanding with the company in May, and the document is now under review by the town attorney. Alburgh has also formed a broadband advisory committee.
Residents would pay $95 a month for a connection with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second or $155 a month for double that speed, according to the proposal. The connection would be symmetrical, meaning upload and download speeds match.
Any family with a student eligible for free and reduced-price school lunch could pay a reduced rate of $45 a month for 25 megabits per second speed.
Households that sign up during an early subscription period would also pay a $400 installation fee, which could be split into two payments of $200. Those subscribers would have to commit to a minimum of two years of service from Matrix.
For the network to be built, at least 460 households — about a third of the town’s addresses — would have to sign up in advance, according to the proposal.
The town’s share of building the network is estimated at $870,000, which is about half the town government’s entire budget, said Ken Millman, a former selectboard member who’s now on the broadband advisory committee.
Matrix will operate the network and cover the remaining cost of building it, about $3 million. The town will have the option to buy the network after at least three years.
Alburgh is a peninsula in Lake Champlain that is connected to Quebec — and is only connected to Vermont and New York by bridges. About 2,000 residents are spread out over the town’s 29 square miles.
About 115 Alburgh residents voted on whether to partner with Matrix, and 75 of them voted yes — just fractions of the town’s roughly 1,500 registered voters, Millman said.
“It wasn’t an overwhelming mandate,” he said. “So the selectboard is currently proceeding, and they’re proceeding with caution.”
That also means the town government is not eager to borrow money for the project, Millman said, and is looking for grants. One option would be to use the town’s $210,000 slice of American Rescue Plan Act funding, he said.
Millman said he’s heard the state talk about “wanting to close the digital divide” for a long time, but now that the pandemic has magnified the effects of that divide — and opened up more sources of funding — progress is being made.
“For the first time ever, it’s actually now doable,” he said. “I think what the state has recognized is that leaving all the money in the hands of the ‘big cat’ internet service providers hasn’t worked all that great for rural Vermont.”
Communications union districts
Funding could also come from the Northwest Communications Union District, of which Alburgh is a member alongside Isle La Motte and 10 communities in Franklin County.
Under a state plan that cleared the Legislature last month, Vermont’s communications union districts, as well as small internet service providers, will receive $150 million of American Rescue Plan Act money to help build out broadband in areas that lack it.
The Northwest Communications Union District was formed last year at about the same time Matrix approached Alburgh about building a network, Millman said.
Sean Kio, chair of the Northwest Communications Union District, said the organization’s goal is to be “like an airport,” connecting municipalities with different service providers.
“We want to invite reliable operators that we feel are a great fit for our communities and meet the needs of the consumers that we’re representing,” he said.
The Northwest Communications Union District says nearly half of the addresses it covers have inadequate connectivity. About 2,100 premises — about 15% of the district’s addresses — have no connectivity at all.
Millman said Alburgh’s need for broadband is in the middle of the pack relative to other communities in the region. He’s heard that some real estate deals in town have fallen through because people realized the existing service couldn’t support remote work.
The “grand slam” scenario, Millman said, is for Alburgh residents to be able to choose between competing providers based on factors such as speed, price and customer service.
In the meantime, Starlink — a new satellite internet service run by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company — could serve as a stopgap, Millman said. Vermonters’ interest in Starlink has outpaced availability, with some residents adding their names to a waitlist.
Matrix Design Group estimates it would take 18 to 24 months to build out a network in Alburgh, though some subscribers could get service sooner, since the company would bring homes online as the network is built, according to the project proposal.
The company previously built a broadband network in nine Vermont towns that are part of the ECFiber Communications Union District, which is based in Royalton.
A good deal?
Kio said the rates in Matrix’s proposal seem “a little high,” noting that a typical municipal fiber rate for speeds around 100 to 150 megabits per second is between $35 and $55 a month.
Yet it’s difficult to compare the rates of internet packages, he said, since real-world connection speeds and additional fees, such as for network installation, vary.
Burlington Telecom, a major municipal broadband provider in northwest Vermont, charges $55 a month for 150 megabit per second internet and $70 for 1 gigabit per second internet. One gigabit is equal to 1,000 megabits.
Millman said Alburgh’s broadband advisory committee has considered that the Matrix rates may be high, though he added they are lower than what some residents are paying for existing internet service that is comparable or lower-speed.
“It’s all relative to what are you comparing it to and what are you getting,” he said. “This is the only fiber offering the town would have.”