VTel today introduced 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) Internet available to every VTel home. VTel’s new 10 Gig residential Internet has been made possible by an $85 million VTel telephone network award from the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS). This RUS project is expected to be complete by June 30, 2015, on budget and on schedule, VTel said in a statement.
“We were proud four years ago to initiate first-in-Vermont 1 Gigabit Internet, at a billion-bits-per-second, at $35 a month” said VTel Chief Technology Officer Justin Robinson. “We’re even more delighted today to announce first-in-Vermont 10 Gbps Internet.”
“We’re very grateful to RUS for all their support during these past three years of construction,” said VTel CEO Michel Guite. “RUS’s vision that super-high-speed Internet can help change lives in rural America is being borne out. Many VTel customers today use 20 to 50 times more Internet than they did before, and rural families who never before used Internet are signing up.”
VTel’s $35 a month price for 1 Gbps Internet remains unchanged. VTel’s new 10 Gbps Internet service to homes is $400 a month.
According to VTel, few Vermont providers offer 10 Gbps to even Vermont’s largest corporate customers, with costs often exceeding $15,000 per month.
VTel’s 1,700-mile optical fiber network, connecting Vermont to New York and Boston and Montreal has pioneered lower wholesale Internet prices for large users in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Canada for almost 20 years. VTel’s fastest-in-Vermont fiber network, offering data pipes at speeds of 100 Gig, today serves three of the largest research universities in the northeast, many of Vermont’s largest high schools, and recently upgraded Burlington School District’s Internet services to 10 Gbps.
Headquartered in Springfield, Vermont, VTel is a small family-owned communications company serving 14 rural Vermont communities, delivering GigE over fiber to every home in its service area, and offering 4G/LTE wireless services statewide. The company also operates a state-of-the-art 1,400 mile optical fiber network to New York, Montreal, and Boston, delivering 100 Gigdata paths to several of the largest universities in the northeast. VTel prides itself on world-class communications services, while answering customer phone calls with a friendly voice on the first ring.
VTel’s network has been serving rural Vermont since 1890, and provided the phone line that enabled Calvin Coolidge to be sworn in as United States President, at Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on August 3, 1923. VTel’s executives, highlighting their ‘customer is always right’ tradition, add that President Coolidge’s father asked that the phone line be removed the day after Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration, and the company complied. VTel was the first telephone company in Vermont to offer Internet services, in 1993-1994, and is today pioneering GigE Internet to homes, as well as super-fast 4G/LTE wireless Internet statewide. For more information, visit www.vermontel.com.
Springfield, Vermont, June 4, 2015 - VTel