Alfred Jones III sits on the Board of Supervisors in Appomattox County, and he was happy to celebrate with Firefly – a subsidiary of the nonprofit Central Virginia Electric Cooperative. It started connecting customers to the Internet in 2018.
“Broadband coming to Appomattox ends up being a game changer for our children who desperately need to be able to access the Internet," Jones says. "They have depended on hot spots and cell phones or going to the public library.”
Large electric utilities had refused to serve rural areas where population density is low, but the cooperative’s CEO Gary Wood said partnerships with government agencies and firms like Dominion have made it possible.
“They will be building fiber on their poles for the main lines and leasing us that fiber. We will take off from there and build more fiber out to homes and down side roads," he explains. "It’s a lot like putting together a quilt. Different people bring pieces, and you have a bunch of people sewing.”
Wood says more than half of customers who are eligible for service have signed up at a cost of less than $50 a month.
"It was one of our early commitments. We absolutely believe that rural families have to have affordable access to very good broadband, so when we started we wanted our basic package to be below $50.”
So far, crews have installed more than 4,000 miles of fiber.
“If people think in terms of building fiber from here to Anchorage, Alaska then that helps them kind of see that’s a big project! It’s pretty incredible that we moved that quickly,” Wood concludes.
He adds that the company is able to keep costs down thanks to grants and funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We borrowed money from them to build electric lines, so they understand the rural areas and the low density, and they were willing to give us money for a smart grid loan, because we’re using the fiber to also help us from the electrical standpoint.”
Some experts contend that what’s been done for rural communities in Virginia can serve as a model for the nation.
