Pandemic ‘lit the match’ on acquiring broadband for county
The lack of reliable broadband service for swaths of Rappahannock County is hardly a new issue. But living with a pandemic the past 10 months has laid bare the disturbing consequences.
Students forced to shift to remote learning often have been handicapped in keeping up with schoolwork due to weak and undependable connections. For many, streaming video isn’t an option.
And, as group meetings and family gatherings have moved to Zoom and other video conferencing applications, a lot of Rappahannock residents have become painfully familiar with frozen images and garbled conversations.
Rappahannock’s sparse population – translating to a limited number of potential paying customers – and its challenging topography have long been a major disincentive for internet providers to invest heavily in infrastructure here. Also, in a county where a premium is placed on keeping taxes low and the treasured viewscape free of cell towers, local officials have been wary of wading too deeply into a broadband whirlpool.
But the fallout from COVID-19 brought things to a head.
“Having a lot of young people in the county who could not do their homework, that lit the match,” said Wakefield District Supervisor Debbie Donehey. “We gotta make something happen.”
THE LATEST
That something came earlier this month when the Board of Supervisors voted to create the Rappahannock County Broadband Authority, an independent corporation that could enter into partnerships with private internet providers.
A critical distinction between the broadband authority and the broadband committee, which has served in an information-gathering and advisory role since it was formed in 2017, is that the authority has spending power and can apply for federal and state grants.
“I’m feeling much more hopeful,” said Margaret Bond, a member of the broadband committee who has been instrumental to the formation of a broadband authority. “Every one of the supervisors is really committed to this. We’re fortunate to have a more forwardthinking attitude.”
One potential partner is the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC), which contacted county officials last spring to see if they wanted to be part of a project that could expand fiber optic service in Rappahannock.
The BOS pledged $100,000 to show its interest, but such an undertaking would be quite expensive, and is contingent on the REC receiving a sizable grant through a new Federal Communications Commission program called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). A decision on that grant is expected soon.
“You’re not going to be able to do fiber optic broadband to every home. It’s just not feasible,” Donehey said. “But what REC does is make it much more possible for a larger percentage of the county to get fiber than other potential options.”
The BOS took another step in addressing its broadband quandary when it approved the updated version of the county’s Comprehensive Plan at the same December meeting. Added to the document is a section providing guidelines for considering zoning permits for wireless communications towers in the future.
The guidelines place a heavy focus on the need to limit the visual impact of such structures, emphasizing that they should be concealed or camouflaged as much as possible, with a goal of limiting the height and mass so a tower is “compatible with the surrounding area.”
County Administrator Garrey Curry said the point is to clearly define the county’s standards in such a way that could inform an ordinance regulating broadband and cell infrastructure.
“This community wouldn’t necessarily support a bunch of 199-foottall towers,” he said. “But maybe we would be a community that supports several well-hidden 80-foot towers.”
Two years ago, the BOS approved a 199-foot tall monopole on Woodward Rd. in Sperryville. Verizon and Piedmont Broadband are now providing service from the structure, and T-Mobile is expected to join them within the next month.
More recently, the supervisors gave the go-ahead to Community Wireless Structures (CWS) to erect a 199-foot monopole near Scrabble. But while the company has begun the zoning application and building permit process, it won’t start construction until it has a lease commitment from a telecommunications provider.
The BOS rejected a CWS proposal to build a similar monopole on Eldon Farms property near Woodville largely due to concerns that it could mar the view.
WHAT’S NEXT
The administrative part of launching the new broadband authority – adopting bylaws, electing officers, filing for incorporation with the state – will begin soon. Once it’s incorporated, the authority can start meeting with broadband providers.
Since it will be expected to contribute financially to any project, the authority will also need to focus on applying for state and federal grant money. But it’s too soon to say if it will be able to gear up fast enough to meet the next set of application deadlines in the spring.
Bond thinks that once the authority has a base of funds, its first project could be to pay for a well-engineered design plan to determine as precisely as possible how many potential subscribers are in the county. It could use such a plan, she said, to tailor future grant applications.
Recognizing the economic necessity of broadband in areas like Rappahannock, both the federal and state governments are now making big financial commitments to the expansion of rural broadband. Through the RDOF program, the FCC recently awarded $9.3 billion in grants nationwide to build out broadband systems over the next 10 years. About $240 million of that total will be funneled to projects in Virginia.
The state has its own rural broadband program, called the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative (VATI). During the 2020 fiscal year, it distributed $19 million to local governments and authorities to extend broadband service to unserved areas, and is expected to almost triple that amount in FY 2021. That’s in addition to $30 million that Virginia took from its federal CARES Act allocation and passed on to localities – including nearby Culpeper, Page and Orange counties – to boost broadband.
The availability of grant money will likely encourage broadband providers to take on projects in places they may have avoided in the past.
And there’s also a new player on the broadband field, one with a big footprint. It’s Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and it’s pressing ahead with an ambitious project called Starlink, through which thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit will provide internet access in otherwise hard-to-reach areas. More than 900 of the satellites have already been launched.
In beta testing around the country, Starlink is delivering download speeds of up to 150 megabits per second, which is about six times faster than the HughesNet satellite service. But that level of performance comes at a high price; the equipment alone will cost an estimated $499, and service will initially run at $99 per month. Musk has described reducing equipment costs as “our biggest technical challenge.”
Still, Starlink’s potential has impressed the FCC. It recently awarded SpaceX almost $900 million in RDOF grants. The company received about $24 million — roughly 25% — of the grant money allocated to Virginia.
“The next 12 months,” Curry said, “will be very interesting in terms of what happens with broadband service.”