Burlington's high-speed telecommunications network is up and humming and the city expects to begin signing up local businesses.

Forty to 50 businesses, Mayor Peter Clavelle said at a Thursday news conference, are poised to take advantage of what he calls the "last mile" connection -- the fiber-optic system the city has built to connect with "major carrier" fiber systems that don't extend into the city.

Burlington, marking the next step in what Clavelle calls its telecommunication "revolution," filed its tariff listing with Vermont's Public Service Board. The tariff sets out the cost of connections and rates available to city businesses. It will take effect Jan. 12 unless the Public Service Board files an objection.

The network, 17 miles of fiber-optic cable, connects city offices and schools across the city to the same computerized files, and phone connections on the system are being completed, said Brendan Keleher, the city's chief administrative.

The new city phone network, Clavelle said, will save the city money on its Verizon contract -- money that will help finance the new telecom network.

Clavelle said the new fiber-optic network, installed over the last two years at a cost of $2.6 million, will ultimately change the way the city does its own business and improve residents' access to government data such as property records and the status of permit applications.

That house-to-City Hall connection remains a vision. In 1996, the city took a long look at creating a citywide fiber-optic network, but found that cost-prohibitive.

The scaled-back version, with main fiber optics running along Pine and Main streets, North Avenue and Colchester Avenue, has linked 38 city offices and schools.

Tim Nulty, the city's telecom director, called the new network "a backbone" that, at present, isn't much use to many small businesses, which might not need the enlarged data capacity possible through the fiber optics.

Larger businesses physically close to the net, however, are interested in the connection, Clavelle said -- both for the improved access to the Internet and for the relatively low cost of a connection.

Such business connections will be cost-free to taxpayers, he said, with the city recovering the cost of running a fiber line to a business from the monthly fees the business pays.

The capacity will become an "economic development tool" for the city, he said, by giving businesses more Internet capacity and by allowing the city to attract new businesses that require such connections.

"We've built the highway," Keleher said, lapsing into metaphor to describe the new network, "and now we'll be building the driveways."

Contact John Briggs at 660-1863 or jbriggs@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
^new ( Display, modify, or delete resource in a separate tab or window.)

- 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
^new ( Display, modify, or delete resource in a separate tab or window.)

- By Emily Stone --- Free Press Staff Writer

SOUTH BURLINGTON -- New laptop computers in South Burlington and Colchester police cruisers will allow officers to do more work from their cars instead of having to call dispatchers or go back to the station, the departments' chiefs announced Friday.

The computers communicate on a radio frequency to their station's computer system and to state and national databases. An officer can, for example, look up a license plate or find out if a driver is wanted by another agency. Previously, the officer had to radio a dispatcher, who would look up the information on the station's computer.

The computer system is believed to be the first of its kind in the state, Colchester Police Chief Charles Kirker said. Other departments, such as Burlington, have laptops in the cars, but they are not connected to the criminal databases, Kirker said.

The system was funded through a $350,000 Department of Justice grant secured by Sen. James Jeffords' office. Each department will have six cruisers equipped with the computers, Kirker and South Burlington Chief Lealand Graham said.

The system can handle up to 100 computers, which would allow other departments to join. A computer and setup would cost about $10,000 per cruiser, Kirker said.

The computers also let officers on the road communicate with dispatchers without using their radios, let them do certain paperwork from the cars and will eventually let dispatchers monitor the cruisers' locations using a satellite tracking system.

The computers free up dispatchers to focus on calls and visits from the public, Kirker said. It also gives officers the maximum amount of time in the community instead of having to come into the station to do paperwork.

"The overall goal is to try and find a way to keep our officers on the road," Kirker said.
Contact Emily Stone at 660-1898 or estone@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
^new ( Display, modify, or delete resource in a separate tab or window.)