Many thanks to the Town Clerk’s Office, Selectboard, Schoolboard, Codogni Plumbing and Readsboro Broadband Committee member Omar Smith for making themselves available in the middle of the day to talk with the Secretary of Digital Services John Quinn and the Commissioner of Public Services June Tierney.  The pair were in Bennington County for Governor Scott’s Cabinet for a Day program and asked to come meet and listen to what has been going on with phone service in one of our isolated towns.

VTDigger posted a story on rural communications issues last week which you can find here. I’m relieved to find no one willing to defend 10 day repair times for folks who only have a land line phone, but that doesn’t actually solve the problem many have been facing.  Please make sure to report outages or poor quality connections to your telephone company right away and stay in touch if you experiencing troubles getting a timely repair. In the short term an investigation and possibly work to change rules which impact repair times in rural areas may provide some immediate relief – but the big picture long term is going to require us to consider Vermont’s entire telecommunications system and providers to ensure reliability for all.