“You can’t conduct your life with dial-up; this [broadband] isn’t a luxury question,” said Dr. Tim Nulty of  ecFiber.net. In part one of this two-part interview, he explains how one community is bootstrapping the creation of an all fiber network in a very rural part of Vermont. His comments, made in April 2012, were prescient of a recurring theme at the 2013 Broadband Communities Summit, that citizens cannot count on national organizations or the Federal government to bring them an advanced communications system.

He calls what they are doing as “localvesting” and emphasizes that local citizens are digging into their “piggy-banks” to finance this network that will allow their community to be able to compete and prevent emigration. And Nulty’s background as former  Principal Economist and Senior Telecom Project Officer for Telecommunications at the World Bank gives him the perspective of the importance of what this group of citizens is doing to keep their region relevant in the 21st century.

Stay tuned for part two of this two-part interview.

Thank you Millennium Communications Group for your support in making this video possible.