NCSC Financing Will Help Expand Fiber in Rural Vermont

NCSC recently issued a line of credit and new financing to Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom (WCVT) to expand its fiber network. WCVT is a third-generation, family-owned telephone company serving 22 towns in the Mad River and central Champlain Valley regions of Vermont that has been providing telephone service to the Mad River Valley since 1904.

The recent financing from NCSC—along with state grant funding—will allow WCVT to build a 10 gig-capable fiber-to-the-home network to almost 9,000 locations throughout its service area and upgrade the parts of its service area where customers are still served by legacy digital subscriber line technology.

“Essentially, this financing is helping to continue the evolution of our copper network to a 100% fiber-to-the-home network,” WCVT President and CEO Eric Haskin said. “WCVT will be leveraging this additional capital alongside our Vermont state grant funding to expand our fiber-optic network throughout our entire service area, offering our communities and the customers we serve access to the latest fiber-optic speeds.”

A Decades-long Relationship with NCSC

This is far from the first time the company has financed with NCSC or its predecessor, the Rural Telephone Finance Cooperative (RTFC). WCVT worked with RTFC in 1994 to help finance the acquisition of the contiguous exchanges to its ILEC area, tripling the size of the company. In 1997, WCVT returned to RTFC for additional capital to help finance various network upgrades, including the replacement of its digital switching platform. Later, in 2008, the company refinanced its existing debt and borrowed additional funds to continue the evolution of its network.

The consolidation of RTFC into NCSC did not give WCVT any concerns when they looked to finance their most recent expansion.

“The transition was seamless from a customer standpoint,” Haskin said. “WCVT has seen no impact from RTFC consolidating into NCSC. We have had a long working relationship with all of the staff at RTFC over many decades, and we are still working closely with all the same people we know and trust.”

With the transition a nonissue for WCVT, Haskin sees the longstanding relationship continuing into the future under the new, consolidated NCSC.

“All our contacts at NCSC truly understand us as an organization and also the rural broadband industry,” Haskin said. “This makes it much easier for us to do business with a partner that gets what we do and how we do it. The rural telecommunications industry is complex, and working with a partner like NCSC makes these complicated transactions much easier.”