The Vermont Department of Public Service is doing a rewrite of the Vermont Telecommunications Plan and next week they're holding exactly two public hearings for comments -- one via Vermont Interactive TV, and the other at Contois Auditorium in Burlington on Wednesday night. The Vermont Access Network (VAN), a consortium of VT PEG access centers, is covering the Wednesday night event, which will be shown on several cable access channels throughout the state and streamed live on the RETN (Regional Education Technology Network) website. VAN will also set up a special blog for taking comments during the hearing. The plan is to have a blogger on-site (possibly me, actually) to read, filter and pass on comments to the department live as the hearing progresses.

This is an opportunity for Vermonters to use telecommunications technologies to engage in the process of rewriting the state's telecommunications plan. It's tremendously cool for access centers to take the lead in this. The whole thing will be done over IP. The only part of the process that relies on analog coaxial cable plant is the bit where access centers send the feed out over the cable channels. Everything up to that point happens via the net.

From an RETN press release...

The Vermont Department of Public Service is required by state law to organize statutory objectives to serve as a state telecommunications policy. The hearing will address the current condition of telecommunications and allow community members to discuss their concerns about accessibility to telecommunications services. This live hearing will be available to view online at http://www.retn.org. Viewers on cable TV or the Internet will be able to send comments to the hearing through an online blog at http://vermontaccess.net/DPS. (there's nothing at the blog url right now, but there will be the day of the hearing.)

Pass it on! This is a really big deal. The Telecommunications Plan will inform every decision the state makes w/r/t telecom policy for the next five years and you pretty much have to bring a flashlight and a shovel to the DPS website to find out anything about the hearings. Some questions that might be worth asking the department include: when promising to deliver broadband to all Vermonters by 2010, how is the state defining "broadband?" Is DSL broadband? How will the state see to it that the northeast kingdom is brought up to speed, technologically? What are the state's wireless plans? What role will PEG access play as cable TV becomes further digitized? Public input in this process is vital.

UPDATE: CCTV Center for Media and Democracy has issued a press release about the hearings that adds the following...

The Plan typically addresses the needs of urban and rural areas, interests of consumers and the cable, telephone and internet companies that serve Vermont. Public interest uses and state regulatory frameworks are established in the Plan and guide state-level investments and decisions. These will have an impact on how schools, libraries, public safety operations, senior citizens, low income people, small businesses, nonprofit organizations and large enterprises access telecommunications services in the future.

The current Plan can be found here.