BiHall Broadcasting Broadband for Ripton

Author: Andrea Glaessner

With spectacular views and miles of forest right in their backyard, residents of the quaint Ripton community seem to have little to grumble about. But in their peaceful mountain oasis, the 566 residents struggle to stay connected with the rest of the world. Sure, there are televisions and telephones, and the booming metropolis of Middlebury is just a short car ride away, but imagine living in a town where surfing the web is like wading through quicksand.
Three years ago, Ripton residents seeking broadband services turned to large service providers like Verizon.
Rick Klein, an interim board member of RBC, remembers contacting Verizon requesting broadband service, only to hear two months later that the company was "not able to provide service to Ripton yet." Eventually, Klein discovered that Verizon was uninterested in investing time and expense to providing broadband to such a small customer base in Ripton.

Instead of sitting around complaining about Verizon, Ripton residents made the classic Vermont move: they took matters into their own hands and formed a co-op: the Ripton Broadband Co-op (RBC). A co-op has the benefit of making group decisions about how to keep the services serving the community equitably and efficiently. Klein said, "We set the prices so we're not subject to the winds of the large service providers [like Verizon]."

According to Associate Professor of Political Science Matt Dickinson, who is a resident of Ripton, "The co-op only charges what's necessary to keep [the broadband services] up and running."

But the best thing for Dickinson is saying goodbye to those days of thumb twiddling in front of the computer screen waiting for an hour-long download to wrap up. According to Dickinson, "I can't tell you how wonderful it is to download things now. I used to joke about Ripton with my students, but it's like we're in the 21st century now."

He may have to find some new jokes about living in an isolated, rural Vermont town, but that is a small price to pay for Dickinson and his family to be able to use their individual computers simultaneously and navigate the web without waiting around. In fact, Dickinson is aware of families who either moved out of Ripton or decided against moving there simply because of the lack of broadband Internet availability.

Not only is broadband convenient, it may change a few lives. According to Paonia N'Shaiha, Chief Technology Officer of North Branch Networks (NBN), 22 percent of Ripton residents are unemployed during the winter months. N'Shaiha hopes that the new broadband technology will empower people in terms of employment. Having broadband at home means some residents can work from home. In addition, Ripton's local schools now have RBC broadband Internet and plans are in the works for an open computer lab during certain evenings for community members to take advantage of fast Internet if they do not personally own a computer.

N'Shaiha would love to make the Internet accessible to everyone who wants it. "Unfortunately," N'Shaiha said, "I have to live in the real world and this stuff is extremely expensive to put together without enormous financial support."

In regards to financial support, the state government has been supportive of RBC. According to Klein, "It's been helpful to have an encouraging climate. The state has definitely been behind us on this project."

Dickinson agrees that other institutions have been extremely instrumental in implementing RBC. According to Dickinson, "We would not have broadband service here without the cooperation of Middlebury College, which allowed the Ripton Cooperative to place a transmitting tower on their buildings. Second, a huge contributing factor was applying for and getting a grant from the Vermont broadband council, roughly $25,000 if I remember correctly, to purchase equipment, in addition to two loans."

The victory of getting broadband in Ripton is even sweeter because of complicated logistics and manual labor involved in its implementation. The idea was conceived in 2003 and it has taken three years to get the system up and running. N'Shaiha, a computer buff who describes herself as someone who "doesn't deal with any unit of time other than a second," designed the network from the ground up.

N'Shaiha's plan starts with a fiber-optic cable fed to downtown Middlebury that is then converted to a wireless signal. The signal is broadcast to an antenna on the top of Bicentennial Hall before being redirected to an antenna attached to a wind tower in Cornwall. After reaching the Cornwall wind tower, the signal is redirected again to another wind tower antenna in Ripton and finally is beamed out to Ripton customers.

The complicated plan just scratches the surfaces of the tremendous effort put into carrying out the entire project. According to Dickinson, "one of the drawbacks of a co-op is that everyone has to pull their own weight, including you." The RBC planners linked up with a Ripton resident who wanted a wind tower to power his home. NBN was responsible for putting up the tower, provided they could attach an antenna for wireless service to the tower. But it was up to the local Riptonites to "get out there on some blustery day to put the tower up," said Dickinson.

The wind tower was not only difficult and expensive to construct, but its creation was met with some opposition from town residents who feared that their mountain vista would be obstructed by a massive wind tower in plain sight. Eventually, after a trial balloon was placed on the site of the future wind tower, residents came to a consensus and agreed to build the wind tower.

The problem of where to place antennas is a problem with which NBN will continue to deal as it takes the Ripton model and brings it to other communities interested in offering broadband in their own small towns. According to N'Shaiha, "We really don't want this to look like New Jersey with a cell phone tower every half mile. So we're trying to find ways to do this creatively and sustainably."

One of N'Shaiha's current projects is figuring out how to attach antennas to trees without causing damage to the trees. N'Shaiha is also experimenting with attaching antennas to existing structures such as grain silos and houses in good locations that can sustain a substantial amount of bandwidth, which can then be redistributed to neighbors.

In the future, RBC will continue to work on extending coverage to the entire community. NBN is looking to use Ripton as a model for other communities, inspiring them to form their own co-op, or to invest in a commercial package provided by NBN. Governor Jim Douglas also encourages the implementation of broadband access for the entire state.

In his inaugural speech, Douglas said, "I propose that by 2010, Vermont be the nation's first true "e-state" - the first state to provide universal cellular and broadband coverage everywhere and anywhere within its borders. When you turn on your laptop, you're connected. When you hit the send button on your cell phone, the call goes through. There would be no more endless downloads, no more hopeless hellos, and no more 'can you hear me now'."

With Ripton paving the way, the new e-Vermont is on the horizon. Now that residents have the option to replace their slow dial-up with broadband for as low as $27.99 per month, Riptonites can surf happy.

Dickinson has been surfing broadband in his home for a month now and finds the service efficient and reliable. In the future, Klein said residents hope to see RBC expand to provide voice over internet protocol. According to Klein, "I'd like to use RBC for all my communication needs and bypass Verizon entirely." Having jumped the huge hurdle of broadband implementation in a town of less than 200 households, Ripton residents have shown the power of cooperation and the future of communication technology in rural towns is looking bright. />