Vermont gets connected By Sue Robinson Free Press Staff Writer This month, Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom realized it had brought high-speed Internet access to nearly all of its 20,000 customers in Central Vermont, and decided to have a party. Friday, Waitsfield joined other independent telephone companies to celebrate how far the state has come in its telecommunication capabilities. In the span of just 18 months, the tiny phone company was able to expand its high-speed Internet access from just 10 percent of its customers to 92 percent. "We've just been plowing our profits back into the infrastructure of this. We've invested several million dollars in the entire project," said Kurt Gruendling, vice president of marketing and business development for Waitsfield. Much remains to be done. Vermont still has thousands of homes and businesses that cannot hook up to the Internet at a high speed without spending thousands of dollars. According to a Federal Communications Commission report, nearly a quarter of all Vermonters do not have access. State industry officials contend that most Vermonters can get access to the Web at speeds faster than dial-up modems, the slowest form of Internet access using phone lines. Industry experts acknowledge there is always room for improvement. "There is a strong need for the development of high speed services throughout the entire state," said Alan Kamman, executive director with the Vermont Telecom Advancement Center. The center is involved with different efforts around the state to improve broadband in areas like the Northeast Kingdom through federal grants and private investment. "We are not there yet," Kamman said. More work Consider Verizon Vermont. Only about a third of Verizon's 260,000 customers have access to Digital Subscriber Lines. DSL uses sophisticated electronics to provide high bandwidth over existing copper lines that transport telephone service at speeds ranging from double that of dial-ups to exponentially faster. Verizon Vermont President Louise McCarren said the company is miles from where it was just a year and a half ago when DSL complaints plagued the company. At that time about 1,000 of 260,000 customers had DSL and it took an average of 23 business days to hook up. Verizon has cut its hook-up time to five days, McCarren said. "It was not a good story 18 months ago," McCarren said. "It is a good story now." McCarren promises to expand its DSL service before the end of the year. Then there is Adelphia, which has had its own share of problems in the past year. Adelphia offers Internet access through its cable TV lines and a modem with connection speeds more than five times the speed of a dial-up. Two years ago about 30 percent of Adelphia's 109,000 customers in Burlington, Rutland and Montpelier, had access to service. "Since then, the company has upgraded and extended its service for both cable and the Internet, despite filing for bankruptcy this past year. Now the Internet is available to roughly 105,000 of its 120,000 Vermont subscribers, said Bob Snowdon, area manager for Adelphia in Vermont. He expected the company to offer Internet access to all its customers, including those in rural areas like Newport, by the end of 2003. More service A number of out-of-state companies such as Lightship Telecom, which came to Vermont in 1999, have also become players in the broadband scene. Lightship plans to expand its coverage area by 50 percent over the next year, said Jeff Koester, chief operating officer for Lightship. Steve Magoon, a computer support specialist for Dufresne-Henry in South Burlington, chose Lightship to hook up the multi-state civil engineering firm because of the option to bundle phone and Internet service. "I would say that you are more limited in Vermont but not completely," Magoon said. "It might be different if you were in the middle of the Northeast Kingdom, but here I had several good companies to choose from." Verizon and Adelphia have concentrated on the Chittenden County, Montpelier and Rutland urban centers in the state. That left many in rural Vermont out of luck -- until now. State officials praise small independent phone companies as pioneering broadband across the technology frontier of Vermont where hills and forest limit accessibility from central offices. Not only has Waitsfield vastly increased its presence, but so has Vermont Telephone, SoVerNet Inc., and Shoreham Telephone. None of these had much high-speed service to offer two years ago. Shoreham for example started installing DSL equipment in its seven central offices last fall, spending hundreds of thousand of dollars. Now all of its 3,000 customers in Addison and Rutland counties have access, said Jim Arnold, whose family owns Shoreham Telephone Co. "We will probably never make any money on broadband but hopefully we won't lose money either," Arnold said. "Interest rates were low and our customers wanted it. It was just time to do it." Contact Sue Robinson at 660-1852 or srobinso@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com