Vermont Has a New Kind of CUD
As a state where dairying is still important, you probably know that cows need to “chew their cud” to digest food. It helps break down tough plant stalks.
The new CUDs in town are technological: Communications Union Districts. They are home grown groups of towns working together to build high-speed fiber optic internet to locations that don’t have internet access or where service is poor.
East Central Vermont Fiber (ECFiber) created the first model in 2008 as a grassroots community network. It worked. The Vermont legislature created an official statewide structure for towns to join together in 2015, and the reason is simple. Commercial internet companies focus on cities and town centers with lots of customers close together where profits are certain. CUDs will go where the private companies won’t: down the dirt roads, up the mountain hollows, and out to the farms and camps that get passed over because connecting them costs more than a company wants to spend.
Is this a local tax-based effort? State law prohibits using state or local tax dollars for communication infrastructure. Instead, CUDs raise money through grants, loans, and bonds, and the monthly subscriptions for service.
Who runs CUDs? There are telecommunications professionals, of course. But CUDs have governing boards appointed by the member towns themselves who help guide policy decisions. The focus stays in our communities instead of a distant company's boardroom.
Vermont created the CUD model as its own solution to a critical problem. NEK Broadband and CV Fiber are our region’s version of that model, working road by road across the Northeast Kingdom and Central Vermont, bringing reliable internet to unserved and underserved areas.
NEKCV's board has committed to hiring locally, using businesses with local ties, and reinvesting profits back into the network or into affordability once it's built. When decisions stay close to home, so do the benefits.
Written by Cayden Clark, Marketing Intern at NEKCV. Learn more at https://nekcv.org/