This article originally appeared in the June 2012 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY

It’s been a while since we’ve heard much about the federal government’s broadband stimulus effort, so this month INTERNET TELEPHONY decided to check in on one of the funding award winners to see where the company is with its network build out and service launch. That company is Vermont Telephone.

VTel, one of the country’s largest family-owned telephone companies, is building a fiber-to-the-home network that will cover the company’s 14 exchanges and will be capable of supporting end user broadband speeds of up to 1gbps, and delivering new video services. It’s also extending its middle mile network within and beyond Vermont. These efforts are being funded by VTel’s own investments, paired with grants and loans from the Rural Utilities Service and the National Telecommunications Information Administration.

The largest outside infusion comes from RUS, which is providing VTel with $92 million in broadband stimulus grants and loans for the FTTH build and a 4G LTE (News - Alert) build, both of which fall under what the company calls its Wireless Open World, or WOW, project.

A separate, $12 million grant from the NTIA will be used to enable VTel to build a highly redundant, 100gbps middle mile network to connect hospitals, businesses and other key community stakeholders.

“We’re really excited with our federal funding to deliver state-of-the-art service to every single premises in our telephone footprint,” says Sharon Combes-Farr, director of marketing at VTel, adding that RUS gave VTel high marks for its application, probably because it came from a  small, independently-owned company with strategic assets in an extremely rural area – and with an ambitious broadband plan.

About 17,000 customers in VTel’s service territory and a few thousand businesses will benefit as a result of the efforts, she says.

Both the wireline access and middle mile networks will be powered by infrastructure provided by Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert).

“It’s really showcasing all of our technology with Vermont Telephone,” says Amit Patel, CTO of national wireline accounts at Alcatel-Lucent.

The middle mile build involves the installation of Alcatel-Lucent’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch, which enables traffic to traverse multiple wavelengths over a single fiber. On top of that will be an MPLS backbone, which will rely on Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Routers. Organizations in the area will benefit from VTel’s new network builds through the availability of new business-class services, which will be delivered courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 9800E. And both organizations and consumers in the VTel footprint will have access to more high-speed broadband services and new facilities-based video services, which will leverage the Microsoft (News - Alert) Mediaroom video middleware, explains Patel.

VTel says the middle mile project will dramatically increase connectivity in its service area, and expand its existing 1,000 mile four-state optical fiber network from Vermont with connections to New York City, Boston, and Montreal.

Delivering facilities-based video will be completely new for VTel, Combes-Farr says. While the company has delivered telephone services to customers since 1890, and was the first Vermont telephone company to introduce DSL services, which it did in the 1990s, the company to date has only been able to offer video services through a resale deal with satellite TV outfit DirecTV. 

By delivering IPTV (News - Alert) over its own fiber infrastructure, however, VTel will be able to provide its customers with faster channel changing; a wider array of programming; better affordability and reliability; and, potentially in the future, a multi-screen capability.

VTel is also updating its phone infrastructure. The company, which had used DMS 100 platforms, is moving to Metaswitch infrastructure. As a result, VTel is transitioning from TDM- to IP-based voice, and will be able to offer more functionality to its business and consumer users.

As for the LTE wireless broadband network, which Combes-Farr says is a significant portion of the federally funded project, VTel expects to announce its technology partner for that the effort soon.

“We have selected our [wireless] vendor, have engineered the network, and are presently in site acquisition mode,” she says, adding that approximately half of the wireless sites have been acquired and that the company expects to roll out the wireless network late this year and throughout 2013.

On the fiber side, VTel and its partners as of mid April had completed engineering for all of the company’s 14 exchanges and had completed drops of the company’s two largest communities. And they were in the midst of laying fiber and doing additional fiber drops.

VTel also has been working to forge deals for video programming and aimed to do a video trial with friendly users in the near future, with a goal of rolling out video on a more widespread basis by later this year.

The entire transition from the current network to the new networks and services should be complete by the end of 2013.