Lynchburg Business

Broadband Expansion: A Vital Connection to Our Area’s Growth

Issue: April 2010 by Johanna Calfee in Inside The Magazine, Technology

Catherine Brown was sick of her commute. Prior to 2008, the Concord native was driving two hours a day each way to her job in Richmond, Virginia, where she often had to stay a couple of nights a week, leaving her two teenagers at home without her. All the while, she knew that if she just had broadband Internet service, she could avoid the drive time.

“For several years, I have been using a satellite Internet connection at home—that was the only option other than dial-up,” Brown said. “My work was offering telework, but the satellite wasn’t reliable at my home, so that wasn’t an option for me.”

But in the fall of 2008, a small business in Concord called GNS Networks began offering WIMAX broadband service, and Brown says that that simple move changed a whole host of things for her.

“I was probably paying $80 a month for satellite [Internet] before that and now I get a higher speed and more reliability for $40 a month,” she explained.

It was the availability of broadband that led Brown to strike out on her own soon thereafter, starting IT Governance Solutions, LLC, a consulting business for information security and overall government information technology.

“Now I can work from home. My clients are in Lynchburg, Richmond and Roanoke, and I can have conference calls and video calls over the Internet,” she said. “I can always be online and available. That, to me, is huge.”

Brown’s previous situation, with limited or no broadband offerings in her area, is one that many in Central Virginia are still facing today. But it’s a situation that Bryan David, Executive Director of the Economic Development Council for Region 2000, is determined to change. For the past several years, he has been working with businesses and city and town councils around the area to create a way to bring broadband service to “underserved” local areas.

“Everyone has Internet, that’s a fact. Broadband services are where you make the distinction as to whether or not an area is underserved,” David said. “I can stand and look out my window [from the 12^th floor of the Bank of the James building downtown] and see parts of Amherst and Bedford counties that are on dial-up.”

While David admits that more people in this region have broadband than do not, he also estimates that roughly one-third of Region 2000 is without it, a problem he equates to being in the Dark Ages in terms of technological and economical growth.

“Right now, we are in such a nascent stage of broadband deployment that just getting people off of dial-up is good enough,” he said.

In order to do that, several more steps must be taken, and grants applied for, though signs of progress are already springing up. On January 25, the initiative to expand broadband services took another step forward as the Bedford County Broadband Authority voted to enter into negotiations with Ashburn-based DigitalBridge Communications Corporation to deliver digital broadband service to underserved areas of the county.

Realistically, this means that, while the partnership with DigitalBridge has been struck, there is still what David refers to as the “last mile” that must be completed in order to deliver broadband service to rural areas. There are three stages in delivering broadband service to an area: the first mile, the middle mile and the last mile. Right now, the underserved areas of Region 2000 fall within that elusive “last mile” of connecting homes to the Internet backbone (our closest major “hub” is in Ashburn, VA). In order to reach this goal, fiber optic cable must be run to areas that now have dial-up service; a time and money-consuming measure that David says will get assistance from existing resources.

“Counties are going to offer up towers and land to aid in this [expansion]. The theory is that the counties will charge the broadband companies a small amount of money for this service,” he said.

But providing the “last mile” of Internet service is a high cost, low payoff endeavor. Right now, the relatively small number of potential local customers who need broadband translates into a small to negative return on investment for broadband companies. In order to help offset capital equipment costs, DigitalBridge and Region 2000 have applied as partners for federal stimulus dollars.

“The grants must be awarded by October of this year and must be spent by October 2012,” David said. “So, under best case scenario, if we receive notice that we have funding for this, hopefully this summer, we hope for [implementation of broadband expansion] to be in place in 10 to 12 months.”

But he says that two possible scenarios could also play out that would set the plan back a notch. The partnership could either be awarded less grant money than they asked for, or not be awarded anything at all. But David says no matter what plays out, it won’t stop the initiative from pressing forward.

“Each one of the counties is committed to the project, as well as DigitalBridge and local government leaders,” he explained. “They were committed to this before the grant money opportunity came about, so we would just have to find another source of money. We will go after other grants, absolutely.”

Region 2000’s plans for expansion are also backed by U.S. regulators, who released a blueprint on March 16 for upgrading Internet access for all Americans. Under the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) initiative, this blueprint includes plans for Internet speeds up to 25 times the current average, and also includes expanded coverage and more airwaves for mobile services.

According to an article released by Reuters, “Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan” is set to receive up to $15.5 billion over the next 10 years, and aims to deliver Internet speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 100 million American households by 2020. Right now, the household average speed is about 4 Mbps.

As for David, the option to continue to keep some areas of our region disconnected is no option at all, despite the potential cost incurred to bring them broadband access.

“People say you are spending a lot of dollars to serve a few people,” he said. “I would say that broadband is very affordable and every bit as much of our life as electricity and the telephone were in the 20^th century.”

He also believes that this expansion is critical to the economic development of Region 2000 since widespread broadband service will allow local companies to create and retain jobs, as well as offer people like Brown the chance to work from home.

“I think professionally I have been able to grow because I have been able to get clients in so many different industries,” Brown said of how broadband has aided her business. “I have met people and become more involved in professional organizations. I’ve been able to be successful as a small business.”

From small businesses like Brown’s to the region’s largest employers, David says that if the workforce has the ability to work from home in certain jobs, then they can be more efficient and cost-effective for the company as a whole.

“From an economic standpoint, if we have ubiquitous broadband coverage, this region becomes a much more competitive place to do business. For existing businesses and growing new businesses, you are not blocked by virtue of where you live,” he said.

The educational side of this expansion is also a key component in terms of making the area more competitive. With Liberty University’s Distance Learning Program and Central Virginia Community College now offering more than 100 courses online, the growing number of local universities offering online classes means that more and more students are turning to the Internet to do their coursework.

Brown’s daughter is among this group of online learners. As a student at Lynchburg General School of Nursing, she can now do a lot of her schoolwork online without having to shuttle back and forth to class from Concord.

Though the full extent of the broadband expansion may still be a year or two away, David believes that the plans set into motion today will mean a big pay-off for Central Virginia in the long run.

“The takeaway from this is that this is both a challenge and an opportunity,” David said. “Intuitively, we know it’s the right thing to do. And once it’s in place, we can’t wait to stand back and watch what happens.”