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Broadband Leadership
VTel is the largest independent telephone company in Vermont, and one of the largest family-owned telephone companies in America. Our traditional service area covers 14 towns and villages in Southern Vermont, serving approximately 50,000 Vermonters, with 21,000 telephone lines. Our Vermont customers have helped us innovate with DSL and have made us one of the U.S. market leaders in DSL penetration. In 2006 almost half of the families we serve use VTel for high-speed Internet, at speeds to 100 Million bits per second.
We Love Vermont
The roots of VTel's formation were planted in 1971 when Michel Guité, a scholarship student at M.I.T., rented an isolated farmhouse near Springfield for $100 a month, and fell in love with southern Vermont. More than 20 years later, and after Guité had become a leading equities analyst at Salomon Brothers, GTE offered its telephone lines in southern Vermont for sale. Guité organized a group of investors, with long-time friend Dr. Walter Hewlett, Chairman of the Hewlett Foundation, to purchase the lines. In the ten subsequent years Guité and Hewlett bought out minority investors, and invested some $50 million in VTel's network. Today Guité actively operates the company as CEO, while Hewlett, although still active, focuses on ranching in California.
Technology Leadership
The unusually innovative nature of Vermonters has spurred VTel to invest in world-class technology, with down-home service. For example, we have had the highest penetration of DSL in America, and we were first in Vermont with GigE and DWDM.
We Try to be Green
We plant 14 new trees for every ton of paper used, we print on recycled paper with vegetable-based ink, and we use bright yellow Clean-Air Hybrid vehicles to serve our customers.
Community Giving
We use de-regulated revenues to creatively assist quality-of-life projects in our communities, and we occasionally contribute outside our communities. For example in 2006 we completed a $65,000 gift to Springfield Hospital and the Springfield Recreation Center to assist families in need. More typically our gifts are in the category of several hundred to several thousand dollars, and support community events such as July 4th fireworks, fire department and school barbeques, music festivals, and student travel.