[nekbroadband]

Very much so. We're looking at EC Fiber as a model of what a successful CUD looks like, and also talking to local electric distribution utilities who have unused fiber assets that we can license from them for residential use. Wireless we are very wary of here, as it is both weather and terrain dependent and provides poor speeds (usually around 14-20m) and one of the larger wireless internet providers, VTel, squandered a USDA rural broadband grant a few years ago and effectively locked the northeast region of the state out of further funding from that program.

[vtthrowaway2519]

Fair enough and thanks for the reply! I certainly didn't mean to suggests that WISPs should get any federal funding directly per se, more that one of the benefits of more fiber deployment would be more options for private higher speed "WISPs" (which could just be a techie on a hill who can put up a few cheap 400 Mbps class PtPs for some neighbors) so there might be coordination opportunities.

Per your comment elsewhere in the thread, I'd definitely like to see 100% of any NEW federal money in particular go to fiber. Even if it takes a while, every bit of incremental build out there is permanent progress, not wasted on dead end ancient copper.

Best of luck to you! I joined a vt governor's campaign back in 2010 in part because they were the only one to really focus on this issue. It's something I think could help the state significantly.