Virginia lawmakers are allocating $700 million in federal pandemic relief funding to broadband expansion, with plans to connect every household to high-speed internet by 2024. The Virginia Mercury reported that 233,500 homes and businesses are unserved in the state.
The funds will go towards helping connect rural areas that have struggled to obtain the infrastructure needed to connect to broadband. According to the Mercury, for a project to be eligible, it must deliver broadband to areas where current speeds are below 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up.
Evan Feinman, who serves as Gov. Ralph Northam’s chief broadband adviser, said the massive funding boost sets the state up to be one of the first large states to achieve universal coverage. “It is a tremendous jump start,” he said.
Northam’s administration believes the $700 million budget should be “more than enough” to accomplish the connectivity goal. The grants will be distributed through the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative, and Northam’s administration anticipates distributing funds to a mix of publicly-owned ISPs and private providers.
“It will be a mixture of medium-sized internet service providers, electric cooperatives, and municipal providers,” Feinman said. “Our strong preference is for an all-fiber network.”
Northam’s administration views publicly-owned networks as “risky endeavors” that duplicate resources, reported the Mercury. “The reason we have the model that we have is we don’t want localities or the commonwealth to bear the risk of a network not being profitable or to have to replicate services that already exist at scale in the private or nonprofit sector,” added Feinman. “Existing ISPs already exist, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
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