Amid a growing legal dispute, ECFiber is preparing to part ways with the Maine-based internet service provider that oversees its operations.

At a Tuesday meeting, the governing board of the state’s oldest communication union district — a type of municipal body created to support the expansion of faster internet to underserved parts of the state — voted to terminate negotiations to renew its operating contract with Biddeford Internet Corp., also known as Great Works Internet, or GWI. 

Meanwhile, the ECFiber board on Tuesday also approved a memorandum of understanding with the Vermont ISP Operating Company, or VISPO, a new nonprofit created last month by members of ECFiber’s board. The MOU tees VISPO up to take over operations from GWI next year.

ECFiber, which offers telecommunications in 31 member municipalities in Vermont, first began contracting with GWI in 2022 following a series of scandals that rocked its previous service provider, the nonprofit ValleyNet. 

ECFiber owns roughly 1,750 miles of fiber optic cable lines and serves around 9,600 customers, according to its 2024 annual report. The construction of the ECFiber network was largely funded by issuing municipal bonding, while the state’s eight other communication union districts are planning to largely subsidize their construction through federal grants.

The decision comes as ECFiber and GWI have quietly begun to trade legal blows, culminating in a lawsuit filed by GWI in federal court last month against F.X. Flinn, the chair of ECFiber’s governing board. The lawsuit alleges that the creation of VISPO was a scheme hatched by Flinn “to literally poach GWI’s business and its opportunity with ECFiber for himself.” 

The 15-page complaint, filed on March 26 in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, accuses Flinn of working with an unnamed GWI employee to spy on the company and of attempting to poach GWI employees for VISPO while allegedly undermining negotiations between ECFiber and the Maine-based internet service provider.

In a written statement, Flinn said the lawsuit “had no basis in reality” and referred to it as a “SLAPP suit,” or a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, meant to intimidate the communications union district out of parting ways from GWI.

“The real story is that ECFiber’s Governing Board has concluded that its mission, its financing, and its interest in creating good jobs for Vermonters is incompatible with having a for-profit operator,” Flinn wrote in an email to VtDigger. 

Central to GWI’s lawsuit is Flinn’s involvement with VISPO, which was established on March 17. The nonprofit is now set to become “the design, build and operating partner of the district” when GWI’s contract lapses at the end of the year, according to a memo to the governing board from the district’s executive committee recommending the move, which was shared with VtDigger. 

In an interview, Flinn said he previously served as one of VISPO’s three founding directors “just for the purpose of filing paperwork” but the organization had voted to transition to a seven-person board, which he is no longer a part of. 

However, as of Friday, Flinn was still listed as one of three directors of the nonprofit in records filed with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office. 

“I just filled a functional purpose to get it started,” Flinn said, adding that he expects to serve as “an ex officio non-voting member” moving forward.

A company meeting

At the heart of the legal dispute is a video recording of a Feb. 11 meeting between GWI employees that was secretly made by a participant who gave it to Flinn, according to the lawsuit and interviews with both parties. 

At the recorded gathering, GWI’s leadership allegedly presented a new organizational chart that appeared to show plans “to reorganize” the company so as “to eliminate Vermont-specific services and expertise,” and “to replace existing local customer service…with a non-local call-center,” according to a Feb. 12 cease-and-desist letter sent to GWI by a lawyer for ECFiber following the meeting. (Flinn declined to share the recording of the GWI meeting with VtDigger or share the identity of the person who made it.)

In the letter, ECFiber contended that those plans violated the agreement between the two entities. In a subsequent letter, the district informed GWI that the district would be terminating ongoing negotiations to renew the contract.

But GWI has insisted that ECFiber’s interpretation of the company’s plans is incorrect, calling the allegations “completely misguided” in a response to the cease-and-desist letter.

In an interview with VtDigger, GWI president KeremDurdag acknowledged GWI was creating a new call center, but he called it “an overflow” for customer service needs that wouldn’t usurp existing operations in the state.

“All our Vermont employees will still be employed in that, we just brought in additional capacity,” Durdag said. 

As for ECFiber’s claim that the company would be restructuring to eliminate Vermont-specific services, Durdag said, “it’s just plain, patently wrong.”

GWI has operating contracts with two other communication union districts in Vermont — DVFiber and Northwest Fiberworx. Durdag said GWI employees currently working with ECFiber may work on projects related to the other districts but would still be dedicated to operations in the state.

“So it’s actually the opposite,” Durdag said. “We want to grow and have been growing our Vermont staff.” 

An ‘insidious plan’

The GWI lawsuit filed against Flinn accuses him of orchestrating an “insidious plan” to acquire footage of the meeting and to use it as a pretext to tank negotiations between ECFiber and GWI, “all with the end game of taking the opportunity of a new operating agreement for himself.”

Flinn “coopted a GWI employee to furnish to him” a surreptitiously recorded video of the meeting, said the lawsuit, which claims the employee was “acting in concert” with Flinn to record the meeting.

The suit also accuses Flinn of stealing confidential information and trade secrets that were divulged during the gathering. 

In a written statement to VtDigger, Flinn categorically denied he had “engaged in some sort of conspiracy with one of (GWI’s) employees.” 

Instead, he called the employee “a whistleblower” who had “brought forward proof for their incredible claim that they were being told to begin doing work for other GWI clients, something that person understood was not permitted under the operating agreement.”

However Flinn acquired the tape, GWI is accusing him of a slew of additional violations in connection with his use of the material, including the misappropriation of trade secrets and acts of unfair competition. 

Flinn has also “approached GWI’s employees for the purpose and with the intent of poaching them for a new operating company to be overseen by his new management company,” according to the lawsuit, a charge Flinn has also denied.

Pointing to the money and resources GWI has sunk into ECFiber’s network operations, the seven-count complaint asks the Vermont federal district court to award the internet service company a variety of different monetary damages.

“GWI did not undertake this work and assemble a team of trained staff simply for F.X. Flinn to poach that staff, misappropriate GWI’s confidential information, and commandeer GWI’s operations and business for his personal financial gain,” the lawsuit states.