ECFiber officials are claiming a significant victory in the internet service provider’s ongoing legal battle with the Vermont-based ISP’s current operator, the Maine-based Biddeford Internet Corp., also known as Great Works Internet (GWI).
GWI filed a suit on March 25, alleging F.X. Flinn of Quechee, the chair of the ECFiber board, encouraged spying on the ISP operating company and is attempting to “poach” its employees to work for a recently founded and wholly Vermont-based not-for-profit entity called the Vermont ISP Operating Company (VISPO). Responding in June, ECFiber sought a preliminary injunction from the federal court ordering GWI to comply with an operations transition policy that the regional Vermont communications union district (CUD) — the state’s oldest — contended the Maine-based ISP operator is flouting.
In a 12-point order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Lanthier on Aug. 11, GWI was commanded to follow key aspects of the ECFiber operator transition policy “such as maintaining current ECFiber-owned billing and network management systems and providing access to systems by ECFiber/VISPO-related personnel,” Flinn asserted in a press release emailed to the Standard the following day on Aug. 12. In turn, the ECFiber Communications Union District, which serves more than 30 communities in central and southeastern Vermont, including Barnard, Hartford, Pomfret, Reading, West Windsor, Windsor and Woodstock, “must continue to make all payments owed to GWI and to assume all costs related to the transition, such as training new operating personnel,” Flinn noted, citing Lanthier’s decision.
“Members of the [ECFiber] Governing Board, particularly those on the Executive Committee, breathed a huge sigh of relief on getting this news,” Flinn told the Standard in the Aug. 12 press statement, responding to Lanthier’s decision filed in the U.S. District Court the previous afternoon. “We believe the new owner of GWI simply didn’t understand ECFiber, the depths of commitment found in its grass-roots history, the desire to keep it as local as possible, its status as more of a utility than a business, and its dependence on the tax-free status of municipal revenue bonds. Each of these attributes were threatened by the model GWI insisted we switch to as part of a contract to replace the one set to expire at the end of the year.”
In an Aug. 14 press release issued on GWI’s behalf by Dylan Zwicky, a partner and the vice-president for government relations with the Montpelier-based public affairs and lobbying firm Leonine Public Affairs, the Maine-ISP provider stated that GWI was “pleased with the U.S. District Court’s recent order affirming that GWI will continue operating the ECFiber network through the end of 2025, rejecting ECFiber’s attempt to compel GWI to turn over its operations and proprietary information to a startup shell company, VISPO. The ruling protects the service that GWI has reliably delivered to nearly 10,000 ECFiber customers through the end of the year, safeguards GWI’s proprietary information, and vindicates GWI’s operational independence from ECFiber.”
Despite the Aug. 11 ruling that ECFiber contends largely affirms its legal standing in the case, the U.S. District Court suit continues before Judge Lanthier. In the meantime, the ECFiber/GWI battle is proceeding in the court of public opinion, with Leonine placing advertisements in regional media that excoriate ECFiber and its plans to transition back to a nonprofit, operating with the recently created VISPO commencing Jan. 1.
For more on this, please see our August 8 edition of the Vermont Standard.
