There’s Something Happening Here

from Valley Business FRONT, Issue 153, June 2021

On Tap from the Pub

Broadband is infrastructure

You can’t drive on it, take a train ride on or fly from it, but as the mantra heard especially loud over the past year in the pandemic world goes, high speed broadband internet access via fiber optic or wireless technology is infrastructure. It allows people to work or learn from home more seamlessly and is an asset needed in some of the more remote parts of the region to compete with other parts of the country where broadband is firmly established.

President Joe Biden, US Senator Mark Warner and State Senator John Edwards are among the many stating that “Broadband is infrastructure.” Edwards (D-Roanoke) sponsored a bill earlier this year that would bring a broadband expansion pilot program to more of the unserved. “It's just as important as roads or electricity or rural electrification was [to a past generation]. Businesses will not come without broadband; our students cannot do their homework [remotely] without broadband. Telemedicine is not possible without broadband in many cases.” Edwards also noted that for some private providers providing that last mile “is not cost effective in non-metropolitan rural areas.”

That scenario led to creation of the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in late April and now has installed more than 100 miles of fiber optics to carry high speed internet. The Edwards bill would allow the RVBA to receive public sector grants, bypassing relationships with private providers that may see the Authority as a competitor for that last mile connection. “Without broadband we cannot have the kind of infrastructure we need,” said Edwards at a Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce legislative roundup in April. State and federal funding to expand broadband is in the works or has been proposed in major spending bills.

Bill Hunter, Director of Communications and Information Technology for Roanoke County, says the RVBA open-access fiber initiative was the “first step,” in the 2016 comprehensive plan under the heading of Connect Roanoke County to the World. Then citizens started calling when they saw other localities getting grants to expand their broadband networks. A survey revealed that about 30 percent of the county was unserved or under-served – with low speed or no internet. “We’ve been kind of working from there.”

That included issuing RFP’s, seeking providers in a publicprivate partnership. Salem-based BTX was one of those private providers helping to fill that gap. CARES act funding has helped when other grant applications didn’t materialize. More than 300 new county addresses will see high speed internet arrive over the next year says Hunter. Some in the more rural Catawba area of western Roanoke County now have it when they “never” thought they would he notes. Floyd-based Mountain Net is using the RVBA trunk line to provide its high-speed internet says Hunter. “The best part about RVBA is, it’s open access fiber. Any provider can use that.”