August 12, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Federal Court Sides with ECFiber against GWI
Rutland, August 11: U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Lanthier ordered GWI to cease efforts to frustrate ECFiber’s transition to a new operator and to follow the Governing Board’s Transition Policy. In her Order Granting East Central Vermont Telecommunications District’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction, the judge found the Transition Policy to have been properly adopted under the terms of the Operating Agreement between the District and GWI, and that GWI’s failure to participate in a transition process was likely to create irreparable harm to ECFiber customers without injunctive relief.
In a 12-point order, GWI was commanded to follow key aspects of the Transition Policy, such as maintaining current ECFiber-owned billing and network management systems (GWI had been planning to convert these to GWI-owned systems despite the District’s objections), and providing access to systems by District-designated personnel. The District was commanded to continue to make all payments owed to GWI and to assume all costs related to the transition, such as training new operating personnel.
“Members of the Governing Board, particularly those on the Executive Committee, breathed a huge sigh of relief on getting this news,” said District Chair F. X. Flinn, “We believe the new owner of GWI simply didn’t understand ECFiber, the depths of commitment found in its grass-roots history, the desire to keep it as local as possible, its status as more of a utility than a business, and its dependence on the tax-free status of its municipal revenue bonds. Each of these attributes were threatened by the model GWI insisted we switch to as part of a contract to replace the one set to expire at the end of this year.”
ECFiber began in 2008 when 23 towns in east-central Vermont voted to enter into an interlocal agreement to create a business that would bring fiber-optic based internet service to the towns, 20 of which had no cable broadband provider. The East Central Vermont Fiber Network quickly shortened to ECFiber, which today is the doing-business-as name of the East Central Vermont Telecommunications District.
The grassroots organizers included members of the ValleyNet board. ValleyNet provided dial-up access in the Upper Valley region of VT/NH and was the only non-profit internet service provider in the United States. By 2010, ValleyNet was out of the dial-up business and the ECFiber effort was its only work. In 2011, the first customers went online in Barnard, and by 2014 about $7.5 million had been borrowed from local individuals and used to build 200 miles of network serving almost 1,000 customers.
In 2015, ECFiber organizers drafted the CUD law and presented it to the legislature, which passed it, and on January 1, 2016, the newly minted East Central Vermont Telecommunications District replaced the interlocal contract. Now its own unique government, ECFiber was able to issue municipal revenue bonds. This sped construction, and all original investors were paid back by 2017.
The success of ECFiber led the Vermont state government to adopt the CUD model as the state’s strategy for solving the rural internet crisis in 2019. By the end of 2020, eight other CUDs had formed. The pandemic was in full flower. The demands pressing in on ECFiber led to a decision by ValleyNet’s key managers, who were seeking to retire, to bring in GWI. During 2022, the District, ValleyNet, and GWI worked to smoothly transition from ValleyNet to GWI without altering the Operating Agreement established in 2016 and set to expire at the end of 2025.
It was during this time that ValleyNet’s Finance Director, Cliff Rankin, hired prior to GWIs involvement, uncovered John van Vught’s embezzlement (many news reports have mistakenly conflated GWIs arrival with the discovery, but in fact, the timing was coincidental, and the record must be corrected). ValleyNet was eventually able to recover some of the embezzled funds and has taken possession of property which together will make both ECFiber and LymeFiber whole. The amount involved was never material to ECFiber’s finances on an annual basis.
In mid-2023, about six months into GWIs operation of ECFiber, Biddeford Internet Corp. – which does business as Great Works Internet aka GWI – received an investment from Mac Mountain, owned by Alex Rozek of Woodstock, who served as an alternate delegate on the District Governing Board 2018-19. GWI asserted this did not constitute a change of control because there was no ownership change, but GWI’s CEO and owner, Fletcher Kittridge, stepped aside and Kerem Durdag became CEO. (Last month, the District learned that Mac Mountain filed its plan to exercise its warrants, and soon, or already, owns 2/3rds of GWI and has 100% of its voting stock.)
Within the ECFiber business, there was no meaningful change: all the employees of ValleyNet, including top manager Tom Cecere, continued to serve as ECFiber staff but were now employees of GWI Vermont, LLC.
In late 2024, GWI presented its preferred terms for a new contract with the District. These boiled down to more than $2 million more annually in fees, with the District governing board giving up any real say in business strategy, pricing, or policy. The District then learned via a whistleblower that GWI was initiating changes in business operations, such as using staff to perform work for other CUDs, that in the District’s opinion, could only occur with the prior approval of the District, such as happened when ValleyNet wanted to use staff to perform work for LymeFiber. Moreover, GWI had laid off many of its Maine-based employees. When told both verbally and in writing to not implement these changes without District approval, GWI resisted and sued Flinn on the pretext that the whistleblower was his puppet and their plans trade secrets.
In response, the District sought to engage GWI in planning a transition for ECFiber back to having a non-profit operator, the Vermont ISP Operating Company, aka VISPO, which was created as a public benefit corporation under Section 115 of the IRS code for companies providing essential government services. This is used by cities who own their own electric company and is a particularly good fit for ECFiber, which seeks to be more a regional utility responsive to its citizenry than a business generating profits for its ownership.
GWI refused, so the District exercised its powers under the operating agreement to establish a policy on transition. Upon its adoption of the Transition Policy, GWI added the District itself to the suit against its Chair. The District answered and countersued, requesting the injunction. This is what was upheld by the ruling on Monday.
For additional information contact:
F. X. Flinn
Chair, Governing Board (Town of Hartford Delegate)
East Central Vermont Telecommunications District (dba ECFiber)
e: chair@ecfiber.net | m:802-369-0069
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