June 21, 2022 – Royalton, VT

ValleyNet (VN), a Vermont non-profit Internet Service provider (ISP), announced that it is
restructuring the means by which it provides its management and design, build, and operations
services. The VN Board, after assessing the ISP market and VN’s small role within it, has decided to
expand its partnership with GWI (Great Works Internet) of Biddeford, ME to embrace the
employment and direct day to day management of VN’s current operational staff. GWI is organized
as a B-Corp. (www.bcorporation.net/en-us/), and as such, is closely aligned with the non-profit
operational ethic of VN and its customers. The board strongly believes that this arrangement will
significantly benefit both VN’s employees and its customers.

ECFiber and LymeFiber customers will continue to be serviced out of Royalton, VT, with all current VN
employees eventually transitioning to the newly formed GWI VT (still based in Royalton). As regional
demand for fiber broadband increases, GWI VT will continue to hire locally to meet the needs of the
community. VN will continue to fulfill its design/build/operation management contracts with ECFiber
(as well as LymeFiber), as it has successfully done since helping to found ECFiber in 2008 and
operating it since 2011. To that end, Carole Monroe, Board Chair, and Stan Williams, CFO will
continue as VN employees.

Tom Cecere, CEO of VN will become the General Manager of GWI-Vermont. Tom stated that “First of
all, when you call ECFiber, the phone is going to ring in Royalton, keeping our strong commitment for
local customer and technical support. This transition is good for our employees – being part of a
larger organization allows for better training, working with others of similar skill levels and
experience, as well as career mobility. VN employees have been supportive of the new employee
arrangement, have met with GWI management, and appreciate that GWI is routinely ranked as ‘one
of the top 25 places to work in Maine.’”

VN has partnered with GWI in the provisioning of services since 2020, starting with choosing GWI as
its phone vendor and assisting GWI in its comprehensive partnership with DVFiber. GWI has also
assisted VN in upgrading its network and ECFiber is once again set to announce significant speed
upgrades at no additional cost later this month as a result.

Stan Williams, VN CFO/ECFiber co-founder, stated, “We believe this partnership with GWI will allow
VN to best serve the future of its employees and its customers, including ECFiber. I personally have a
strong stake in making this succeed to the benefit of both ECFiber, which I helped found, and current
VN employees, many with whom I worked directly when I was VN’s CEO.

VN is a tiny, rural, non-profit ISP which has had an important impact on VT’s telecommunications, but
the ISP market is evolving rapidly and becoming complex. Our structure and location have made it
difficult to recruit talent and achieve sufficient scale to be viable as an operator in the long term, so
we are contracting with a larger, trusted regional partner to provide day-to-day operations using local
employees. VN remains responsible for fulfilling our design/build/operate contracts with both
ECFiber and LymeFiber and we will continue to provide strategic direction, budget and finance
decisions, as well as operational guidance day-today, all at relatively inexpensive rates versus
commercial operators.”

F. X. Flinn, Chair, East Central VT Telecommunications District (d.b.a, ECFiber) commented,
“ECFiber and its Governing Board strongly support this arrangement and we will continue to rely on
VN to provide its full scope of management services, even as it delegates day-to-day operations to
GWI. VN continues to provide ECFiber with strong operational, budgetary, and financial guidance
which has allowed ECFiber to maintain a significant but manageable debt load. And we have come to
know GWI as a trusted partner of VN, starting with phone service and more recently network
operations.”

Fletcher Kittredge, GWI Chairman, stated, “We have watched VN grow in VT and have been working
with them for some time to our mutual advantage and we hope for that to continue with this
mutually beneficial expanded relationship. We have especially relied upon VN to explain the
municipal revenue bond market to districts in northern New England we are assisting. We are
committed to VT and VT employees to serve ECFiber, DVFiber and LymeFiber.”

Carole Monroe, VN board chair, said, “This partnership with GWI allows VN to continue to provide
excellent customer service to ECFiber and LymeFiber and to provide managerial, marketing and
technical expertise to the VN staff. VN will continue to provide consulting assistance to the
Communication Union Districts in VT as well as the developing districts in New Hampshire and
Maine.”

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ValleyNet has been an Internet Service Provider (ISP) since its foundation as a Vermont non-profit
organization in 1994 as a provider of dial-up. Since 2008, VN has been assisting the East Central
Vermont Telecommunications District (ECFiber, www.ecfiber.net) in financing, building and operating
a universally available fiber-to-the-home network in east central Vermont. ECFiber now has over
1,600 miles of optical fiber network and over 7,000 customers. By 2025 ECFiber expects to have
invested approximately $90M to pass all on-grid premises in its 31 member towns, maintain over
2,000 miles of fiber-to-the-home network and serve over 15,000 customers. VN and its 28+ (and
growing) employees in Royalton operate the system under contract to ECFiber. Vermont has adopted
this model of regional, municipally owned network districts (operated by independent operators
under contract) to achieve universal fiber coverage.

In 2020 VN began operating a town wide fiber optic service in Lyme, NH under contract to LymeFiber
(www.LymeFiber.net) and is partnering with Great Works Internet (www.gwi.net) of Maine to build
and operate the Deerfield Valley Communications Union District in southern Vermont. VN continues
to consult with multiple actual or potential communications districts in multiple states.

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https://valley.net/about-us/
Contact:
Carole Monroe, Board Chair
Stan Williams, CFO
info@valley.net
(802) 763-0330