Vermont Public Service Board Endorses VTel CPG Petition

 Vermont Telephone Company, Inc. (VTel) today announced that the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) has approved a Certificate of Public Good (CPG) for cable television service, allowing the company to offer video programming within its existing service area in fourteen local exchange areas in Southern Vermont.

 CPG approval from the PSB, which was issued yesterday, was the final step the company needed to fulfill the funding requirements established by the USDA Rural Utilities Service for VTel’s “Wireless Open World” (WOW) initiative.

 VTel can now extend fiber to every home and business in its service area and begin rolling out state-of-the-art 4G/LTE high speed, wireless broadband services in Vermont.

 “This CPG was the final piece we needed to move into the implementation phase for our network build-out in Vermont,” said Justin Robinson, president of VTel. “We can now extend cable television services to underserved Vermonters who currently do not have access, and also increase local competition in areas that do.”

 Construction on VTel’s fiber-to-the-home project will begin in North Springfield, with Wallingford and Springfield soon to follow.  At the end of the project, all of VTel’s copper telephone network will be transitioned to the latest fiber optic technology.

 “There's still a lot of work yet to be done, but this is a move towards providing more Vermonters with the communications services they need in modern society,” Robinson said. “The PSB moved quickly to approve this CPG and this moves us from planning to implementation of the WOW project.”

 "They will offer an alternative for people in their service areas for people that already have cable service and it will offer a good many people the opportunity for cable for the first time," said Jim Porter, director of the Telecommunications Division for Vermont’s Department of Public Service.

 Read more information about VTel’s cable television CPG filing here:

 http://www.vermontel.com/images/stories/pdf/VTel_TV_CPG_Petition.pdf

http://www.vermontel.com/images/stories/pdf/VTel-DPS_MOU.pdf