Town wants assurances that all residents will be covered

By Ruth Melville

Discussions with Frontier Communications about wiring Norfolk with fiber optic cable are ongoing.

Frontier has already begun installing fiber optic cable in several towns in the Northwest Corner, including Barkhamsted, Winsted, Norfolk, Torrington, Harwinton, New Hartford and Falls Village. In Barkhamsted and Winsted, Frontier is providing universal coverage: all homes in town will be covered at no cost. However, in Norfolk and Falls Village, Frontier has proposed to wire only part of the town. Each town must then decide whether to pay the company to extend the service to the remaining areas.

Frontier has done a survey of the roads in Norfolk, and their plan is to pay all the costs to run fiber optic cable to a significant majority of the town. Brett Robbins, a member of the town’s Fiber Optics Study Committee and the Economic Development Commission, says that based on his committee’s research, this will leave between 18 and 21 percent of Norfolk homes not covered.

The price Frontier is currently quoting to provide universal coverage is about $467,000, down from $578,000 in December 2022, and substantially less than the amount suggested in 2021, when it was estimated that, even with millions raised through private funding, the town would have needed to borrow $4 million to complete the project. 

First Selectman Matt Riiska admits that while “it’s exciting that the price has dropped dramatically,” he wants concrete information about which homes that $476,000 price would cover. We need to be sure, he says, that “all means all. If we’re to pay a dollar amount, we want that dollar amount to cover everyone else. Everybody has to have access. I can’t ask people to pay for it, if it doesn’t include every house.” 

Riiska and the chair of the Board of Finance, Mike Sconyers, have been in talks with Allison Ellis, Frontier’s senior vice-president for regulatory and government affairs. Ellis is also involved with the Barkhamsted and Falls Village efforts.

In early February, Riiska also had a conference call with the first selectman of Barkhamsted, Don Stein; the first selectman in Falls Village, Henry Todd; and Northwest ConneCT’s Kim Maxwell to talk about Frontier’s proposal. According to the Lakeville Journal, at their meeting on Feb. 6 the Falls Village Board of Finance decided that they did not have enough information to recommend approving Frontier’s offer and voted to table the matter.

Robbins underlines the importance of bringing high speed internet to Norfolk. “Fiber broadband has become necessary to life. Google searches, Facebook time, email and streaming television are daily activities for virtually everyone today. Covid has heightened the need for high speeds to work from home, conduct education at home, make doctor visits from home.”

Acknowledging that the final figures are not yet settled, Robbins says that the Fiber Optics Committee estimates that Norfolk can deliver universal fiber optic speeds for less than a 0.5 percent increase in the mill rate. He worries that if the town decides to do nothing now, asking Frontier to come back at a later date will be much more expensive, and that Norfolk would run the risk of falling behind neighboring towns in its ability to attract new residents and businesses.

Riiska says that he is currently working on next year’s budget and so a decision on whether to accept Frontier’s proposal has to be made soon, ideally by March 14. He has told Allison that “what we really want is a letter of commitment or a contract.” He would also like Frontier to provide an updated map of their survey of town roads. “We need to know what their coverage plan is.”