ECFiber — the trade name for the internet broadband network owned by the East Central Vermont Telecommunications District — has received a $3 million “Affordable Long Drop Program” grant from the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) to help with the costs of nonstandard fiber installation for 1,000 eligible customers in its service area of 31 towns. The grant was made available in April and will expire on Sept. 30.
The network is designed for reliable operation without manual intervention.
Internet and phone services will continue uninterrupted through the management transition.
All network infrastructure, software systems, and operational processes remain in place and under the ownership of the district; ownership is not changing.
Maintenance partnerships and outage-response arrangements remain fully active.
Staff will be available during and after the transition to answer calls and address repairs.
The chair of the governing board of ECFiber said Monday it is ready to take over operations of the telecommunications district.
East Central Vermont Telecommunications District, which does business as ECFiber, formed the Vermont ISP Operating Company, or VISPO, as a nonprofit to take over its operations from Great Works Internet at the end of its current contract, which ends December 31.
ECFiber board chair F.X. Flinn and GWI’s northeast division president Tom Cecere explain the key points of contention in the ongoing dispute over the operating contract and transition to a new operator.
The article provides a detailed discussion between the ECFiber board chair and GWI’s northeast division president regarding the contract dispute and planned transition to Vermont ISP Operating Company (VISPO).
WASHINGTON, August 13, 2025 – A federal judge issued a ruling Monday that she said would prevent thousands of rural Vermonters from facing internet outages over a contract dispute.
Great Works Internet, or GWI, has been disputing a coalition of Vermont towns’ plan for transitioning their fiber network to a new nonprofit operator started by coalition board members, arguing in court that it isn’t obligated by its current contract to help the nonprofit. There’s bad blood between GWI and the coalition, which for months have been locked in legal battles around the plan to ditch 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.
A legal battle over the operating contract for the ECFiber internet service provider (ISP) network — the state’s oldest communication union district — has been playing itself out in the U.S. District Court in Burlington since March 25, when the Vermont-based ISP’s current operator, the Maine-based Biddeford Internet Corp, also known as Great Works Internet (GWI), filed suit against F.X. Flinn of Quechee, the chair of ECFiber’s governing board, accusing Flinn of trying to “poach” GWI’s business in the more than 30 municipalities it serves.
On July 14th the outgoing operator of ECFiber, GWI, addressed an “Open Letter” distributed to officials and residents of our member towns. Read our response below. Both documents are also available as PDFs: ECVTD Response | GWI Open Letter
In Response to GWI’s Unsigned Open Letter
On Monday July 14, an unsigned letter from GWI was sent to ECFiber member town selectpersons and the press by GWI’s media relations and state government lobbying firm. The unsigned letter seeks to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt within our community. GWI has already attempted to do this with ECFiber Governing Board members, ECFiber bond bankers and bond holders, and state broadband officials. They have not succeeded. Now they turn to you.
South Royalton VT: ECFiber, the internet service provider (ISP) created in 2008 by a grass-roots effort to solve the problem of broadband availability in rural Vermont, is pleased to announce that its new operator, the Vermont ISP Operating Company (VISPO) has named Gopi Sundaram as Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Sundaram, a graduate of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, has had a long career in the ISP industry, notably as Managing Director with the Tetrad McCourt consortium, the investor group which led Ireland’s National Broadband Plan. He currently is a managing partner at Radius Capital Partners, a firm specializing in rural broadband investments. “My family and I are very happy to be returning to the Upper Valley. The opportunity to lead one of the most inspiring businesses in the industry is exciting. ECFiber literally invented the Vermont Communications Union District (CUD) model for delivering world-class broadband to rural towns that were otherwise being ignored by cable companies, and it did it without grants or taxes.”
