Woodstock Early Bird The Early Bird Gets the Worm: earlybirdtips@gmail.com

Now several years old, the ECFiber project (short for East-Central Vermont Community Fiber-Optic Network) is now closer than it has ever been to bringing high-speed Internet, telephone and cable service to every resident of Woodstock.

This has been the goal of the project – to cover as many area towns as possible with high-speed broadband service, down to “the last mile.” At this point, the ECFiber service has been deployed in Barnard, reportedly with good results. Now, a total of 170 people are connected to high-speed broadband through this project.

According to David Brown, the Woodstock delegate to the ECFiber Governing Board, another $350,000 needs to be raised in order to bring this service to every resident of Woodstock.

Brown says $50,000 has been raised for the Woodstock deployment thus far, and additional pledges and general subscriber revenue helps to accelerate the Woodstock portion of the project.

Tonight, Brown will be leading a Community Organizing Meeting about ECFiber and Woodstock, at Woodstock Town Hall at 7:30 p.m.

Local residents will learn what they can do to help, and have their questions answered.

The set-up of the project is unique. Brown points out that ECFiber is a “non-profit organization owned by 23 Vermont municipalities,” including Barnard and Woodstock.

BTW, EC Fiber’s Brown says the group has been denied federal and state funding so it is raising money privately by selling $2,500 promissory notes paying about 7% annual interest…

Obviously, there are various (perplexingly complicated from WEB’s point of view) financial layers of this project. But the idea — on one level — is to make Woodstock more competitive and attractive from a business and residential point of view with much faster and more reliable internet via fiber optic lines.