VIENNA, Maine — After a regional effort to bring broadband to the lakes region west of Augusta fell through, the town of Vienna, population nearly 600, decided to go it alone.
Around five years ago, major broadband providers including Consolidated Communications declined to extend cables there, citing its small population. In March 2023, voters approved a municipal network. On Aug. 1, Vienna Broadband will switch on for its first customers.
It opens with new competition. Last year, Fidium Fiber, a Consolidated Communications brand, which declined to expand before and owns some of Vienna’s utility poles, began offering its own broadband to locals for $30 per month. It undercuts the local offering at least for the first year.
The surprise competition amounts to a “David and Goliath” situation, said the chair of the Vienna Broadband Authority, Jim Anderberg.
It’s also the next frontier in the quiet, town-by-town battle over Maine’s broadband future. Vienna is one of more than a dozen towns with a local broadband authority where Fidium Fiber advertises itself as a competitor. The state’s high court is now deciding a case that stemmed from one town saying it has made implementation of locally controlled networks difficult.
Many of these local networks came out of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The next year, an industry group spent $14,000 advertising against local broadband in Readfield, a bigger neighbor of Vienna. It was defeated soundly. In January 2023, Vienna got $2.2 million in federal money. Two months later voters moved ahead with Vienna Broadband.
Then the process slowed down. Local officials blame Consolidated Communication delaying Vienna Broadband’s launch by around a year, with Anderberg saying the company “dragged it out” by making it difficult to negotiate access to its poles.
While Vienna was waiting for pole access, Anderberg said Consolidated ran Fidium cables through parts of town and pulled DSL service, leaving customers with little choice but to sign up for Fidium — before Vienna Broadband was up and running to compete.
“This is competition, this is the way the world works,” Anderberg said. “They’re turning into Fidium customers rather than Vienna Broadband customers.”
To avoid further delays and potential legal costs, the town paid fees to the company to cover the cost of preparing poles, as did Arrowsic, which is also facing new competition. Towns that are deemed underserved do not have to pay these “make-ready fees” under state regulations that Consolidated and other broadband companies have said are unconstitutional.
That question is now before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court after the state Public Utilities Commission ruled against Consolidated in a 2024 decision in a case over nearly $100,000 in make-ready fees charged to Somerville. Arguments were held in April, and the high court has yet to render a decision/
A Fidium spokesperson said the company could not comment on “rumors” that it has delayed municipal projects or on pending litigation in the Somerville case. But a lawyer for the company told the court in April that case law is “well settled” on the constitutional question and the fees were necessary to make room for the competing pole attachments.
“The town of Somerville has basically become the litmus test for Consolidated Communications, who is basically extorting all of these small towns,” Doug Shartzer, the chair of Somerville’s broadband board, said.
Redundancy of the new local networks was one of the main themes of opposition to their creation, including in a 2022 blog post from the conservative Maine Policy Institute, which created an offshoot to help industry groups fight local proposals. The group has criticized state regulators for an overly broad definition of underserved households.
But Maine towns generally did a lot of work persuading big companies to expand service before going the local route, said Peggy Schaffer, who retired after leading the state’s broadband office as well as the Maine Broadband Coalition. She called competition good because it brings down prices, but she didn’t blame towns for feeling burned by the new expansions.
“They have absolute authority and power to do that if they can make money at it,” she said of the companies.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural politics for the Bangor Daily News and the Maine Monitor. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
