Connect Hanover, a project aimed at providing affordable broadband internet to parts of Hanover County currently without access, is moving forward, the county’s IT director said.
Kevin Nelson, the IT director, told the Hanover County Board of Supervisors on Oct. 9 that partners on the project — which was originally scheduled to be completed by August — have been making steady progress, installing over 500 miles of fiber-optic wiring in parts of the county.
Hanover is set to begin installing its own above- and below-ground fiber wiring as early as next month, according to Nelson, and new internet service connections could begin as soon as February.
However, Nelson also said the county may have to seek additional funding in order to meet its goal of providing internet to all underserved households, after new federal regulations complicated the county’s initial goal.
“When we started our initiative, it was the board's goal to have 100% access to broadband internet across the county,” Nelson told the board earlier this month. “We came up with a plan that addressed 95% of those, and we've been working to try and get the last 5%.”
The Connect Hanover initiative launched in 2021 when the county received a grant from former Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration. The Virginia Telecommunications Initiative invested over $14 million in new broadband infrastructure to serve county residents.
That grant will combine with nearly $15 million in county funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and over $26 million in private investment from partners like All Points Broadband, Dominion Energy and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative to extend broadband service to almost 6,200 residents and businesses.
Through a series of surveys and studies, the county was able to map the areas where underserved residents were located, but hadn’t identified every household in need of service, according to Nelson.
“We found over the last few years that there are a number of folks who live in what I would classify as a suburban service area, who we thought had access to existing internet service providers, but they do not,” he said.
According to Nelson, one complicating factor is new Federal Communications Commission standards for equitable access to broadband.
The federal government uses download and upload speeds as benchmarks for broadband providers. Since 2015, download speeds of 25 Mbps per second and upload speeds of 3 Mbps were the standards for internet providers.
The FCC raised its benchmark to download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 20 Mbps, which added over 900 Hanover homes to the list of underserved households.
County Administrator John Budesky said the county is working with private partners, like All Points, to keep service on par with FCC standards.
“I can't tell you how many days I wish we had a truck that could hang fiber and provide it to the homes, but it's much more complicated,” Budesky told the board. “At the end of the day, it's about delivering for our residents, and we are. While we are months behind where we had planned to be, it is coming.”
Both Budesky and Nelson said the county intends to work with internet providers to seek additional funding to expand broadband access to those newly identified underserved areas.
The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, part of President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, provides over $42.5 billion in national funding for local projects to expand high-speed internet access. Nearly $1.5 billion of that money is allocated for Virginia projects.
Nelson said he would return to the board with a letter of intent to support private partners seeking BEAD funding; broadband providers have until Nov. 30 to indicate their intention to apply.
