Hojun Choi
Uku Meri started honing his DJ voice as a kid in Queens, New York — the Lafayette radio kit hooked up to an antenna out his bedroom window was his way to feel connected and heard in the concrete jungle.
“I’d tell my friends at school to tune in from 8 to 9 p.m.,” Meri said.
Meri, 66, kept his love of playing and sharing music into adulthood. In 2013, he shed his cityscape for the Green Mountains to be with his partner in Cabot. He hosts and produces a radio show, “Music as Art,” on WGDR-FM.
“It keeps me sharp,” he said.
Standing in the way of his “labor of love,” however, is his spotty internet service, which regularly disrupts his work for the show. Meri said he went more than 21 days without internet in late February and March, forcing him to drive more than 20 miles on icy roads to get his show online.
The lack of reliable connectivity has also hindered him from remote job opportunities, something he had turned to after being laid off during the pandemic.
“I had all these job offers to do remote work, and I could do this theoretically if I had decent internet, but I can’t do it because I can’t be relied upon,” Meri said.
In a February press release, the Vermont Community Broadband Board announced that the state had “unlocked” $93 million in federal funding to fuel high-speed internet to “more than 99 percent of Vermonters.”
Despite the promise of that effort, Meri — who literally lives on Last Road — said his hope is eroding.
“I was told it’s called, ‘Lost Road,’” Meri said.
Meri’s internet is carried by copper wires, a technology that both internet connectivity advocates and federal telecommunications regulators deem outdated.
Internet infrastructure projects were approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration as part of the federal Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, an effort approved by Congress in 2021 to provide high-speed broadband access to residents in rural and often underserved areas.
A major goal of the program is to fund projects for replacing old technology such as Meri’s with fiber-based equipment, deemed the standard for high-quality broadband.
In addition to the $93 million, BEAD projects in Vermont will be supported by nearly $70 million in private capital, state funds, and federal grants, according to the state broadband board.
About 72% of approved BEAD projects in Vermont were awarded to the NEKCV Communication Union District, which serves the Northeast Kingdom and central Vermont.
“We had more than 50 percent of the unserved addresses in the state and that was across 72 towns, and there were large swaths that had no underlying infrastructure,” said Christa Shute, executive director of the organization.
Most parts of Cabot, including Meri’s address, are included in the union district’s BEAD project plans. Shute said the necessary state and federal permitting, including those required by the National Environmental Protection Act, could take more than a year.
“We’re looking at service being available at some point in 2027,” Shute said.
About 30% of the NEKCV’s approved BEAD fiber projects will be in central Vermont, Shute added.
“Many of these places have been waiting for a really long time, and frankly have really incredibly bad speeds, so they’re just really excited to be able to join the 21st century,” Shute said.
Meri, who gets his internet through Fidium, would have to switch his provider to gain access to high-speed broadband.
A spokesperson from Fidium, which also received funding from the BEAD program, said the company does not have any fiber projects approved in central Vermont.
In addition to fiber infrastructure, approved BEAD projects in Vermont involve low-Earth-orbit satellite internet through SpaceX’s Starlink.
Of the $93 million in Vermont-based BEAD projects that was approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), SpaceX’s portion represented about $3.3 million, according to the state broadband board.
Alexei Monsarrat, director of broadband projects for the state broadband board, said the state’s plans to increase high-speed internet always included some low-Earth-orbit-satellite solutions.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s recent rule changes for the BEAD program, under President Donald Trump, ultimately led to the state broadband board including more low-Earth-orbit-satellite–based projects, Monsarrat said.
“The Biden administration had built into the program a preference for fiber, and we as state agencies were allowed to pick projects that were proposing to build fiber as the number one option,” Monsarrat said. “The big thing that the Trump administration changed was to remove that fiber preference.”
The Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, a nonprofit that advocates for more equitable access to internet technologies, has been closely following the BEAD program since its inception.
Under Trump, the national telecommunications administration focused on driving down the cost of the federal broadband deployment program, said Reid Sharkey, a researcher for the Benton Institute.
Vermont’s $93 million represents about 41% of the amount originally allocated to the state.
While better than copper-based connections, current low-Earth-orbit-satellite internet technology falls short of the reliability that fiber-based internet service offers, Sharkey said.
“You’re relying on a line-of-sight connection. If anything interrupts that connection, you’re going to have a deterioration of that service,” Sharkey said. “If you have snow, if you have bad weather, it’s not necessarily going to cut you off, but it’s going to slow you down.”
Still, the program will greatly reduce the number of people currently stuck with old technology, Sharkey said. Less than 10% of addresses in the country had copper-based internet as of 2023 — a figure that has likely decreased since, Sharkey said.
Meri said he has tried satellite internet in the past, and is not keen on the technology.
“It doesn’t really work in rural Vermont. I also don’t want to give Elon Musk any money,” Meri said.
Looking out the window from his home studio where he records his radio shows, Meri sees the snow melting away and the greenery returning.
Still, with no immediate solution to his internet troubles, he feels a hole in his life.
“Rural internet is a real issue. I know some people are going off the grid, but I am not,” Meri said. “I want to be connected.”
