Virginia deems two-thirds of recently funded broadband expansion projects behind schedule

Virginia wants 1,000 megabits per second internet speed, everywhere. The process to get there can take months per cable mile. 

That hyperspeed download capacity is still years away for some rural residents, as Virginia and the rest of the country work to expand fiber-optic broadband everywhere, post-pandemic.

The commonwealth’s lawmakers added a new law and $30 million to the budget this year to help spur the process — via utility poles and underground. This summer, the state department in charge of the money sent letters to 22 projects that it believes are at some risk of blowing a key deadline.

That’s nearly two-thirds of the 36 projects that Virginia funded in the 2022 fiscal year. Eleven of those at risk are in Southwest and Southside, according to letters acquired via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

One of those projects — which covers parts of Bland and Montgomery counties — is at a high risk of finishing late, the letters show.

Officials working on the Bland-Montgomery rollout say they are confident they will be finished well before the end of 2026. After that, the federal government would take back whatever pandemic-era funding any project fails to spend.

“These big projects take time, and everybody’s working really hard at it every single day,” said Kevin Byrd, executive director of the New River Valley Regional Commission, which is overseeing the work.

A few replies to the round of letters show that even some projects classified as low-risk are experiencing issues that leave their progress in doubt. 

Roanoke County Administrator Richard Caywood, whose office is overseeing three separate projects, wrote that the county might transfer the work for one of them — a relatively small zone that would serve 177 locations — from its internet service provider partner to another company in the area.

[Read more about this Roanoke County project: This neighborhood shows the challenges of bringing broadband to all Virginians.]

In Campbell County, the work will likely be done by September 2025, but the county will reassess its progress in December before deciding whether to ask for an extension, take corrective action or ask to transfer some of the work, County Administrator Frank Rogers wrote.

The West Piedmont Planning District Commission, which is overseeing work in Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties, used its reply letter to ask that its completion date be extended about a year, to February 2026. 

Some residents, weary of the delays, have run out of patience.

“Lots of Patrick County is without broadband access even to any minimum standard, and some places have no option at this point but to try for … satellite internet,” county resident Bill Clark wrote in an email exchange.

Getting the poles ready

Centering many delays is the “make-ready” process, which involves preparing utility poles to carry the additional broadband cable required to deliver internet access. That process could also lead to replacing poles or adding new ones.

The bill that the General Assembly passed and Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law focuses heavily on that process. The make-ready law went into effect on July 1.

The need for action arose from disagreements between ISPs and the utility companies that own the poles. Lawmakers and others reported some disagreements over the time it takes to prepare poles to carry new cable, or replace and add new poles to handle the increased load — the make-ready work — and to pay for it.

The state created a funding pool called the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative, or VATI, to spark such work years ago. The federal grant to the commonwealth from the 2021 American Recovery Plan Act was about $750 million. State, local and private money — not subject to a spending deadline — pushed the VATI total to about $1 billion.

VATI granted much of that money in 2022, and a backlog of work orders followed, as utilities and telecommunications companies scrambled to gather the resources. They faced a Dec. 31, 2026, deadline to spend the $750 million federal infusion. 

The make-ready law, which legislators say streamlines the pole work, for the first time provided an arbiter: the State Corporation Commission, using FCC utility rules as its guide in disputes about the poles.

Lawmakers, realizing the financial drain the work could cause the private-sector companies that are involved, put $30 million from the state’s general fund into what it calls the Virginia Make Ready Initiative. That money can pay for unexpected pole replacements, contractors and more. With that budget item, the legislature included a requirement that the Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees all the deployment projects, determine which ones were at risk of not being finished by the end of 2026.

Option: More money to speed the work

The housing department’s Office of Broadband awarded 36 projects in the 2022 fiscal year, according to a spokeswoman. At least two are complete, and another 13 are classified at no risk of failing to meet the federal deadline.

In letters sent to the other 22 project leaders, Office of Broadband Director Tamarah Holmes laid out multiple options, including one in which they could reaffirm their project delivery by the deadline. She wrote that applicants may apply for grants from the Virginia Make Ready Initiative, or VMRI, for costs incurred from the beginning of 2024.

“Eligible expenses include pole replacements, mid-span pole installations, and in some instances, undergrounding expenses of previously planned aerial broadband networks,” Holmes wrote. “No more than $30,000 per mile will be awarded.”

When the broadband office sent the letters, 11 Southwest and Southside Virginia projects were among the 22 at risk, but one of them, in Floyd County, was recently completed, the documents show. 

Two are in Bedford County and three are in Roanoke County, while one Roanoke County project from that funding round is complete. One of Bedford’s 2022 projects did not receive a risk letter and one is complete, while one of the two receiving “at-risk” notification is doing work recently transferred from one ISP to another, to speed the process. There is one each in Franklin, Campbell, Scott and Pulaski counties. The West Piedmont Planning District Commission is overseeing work that covers parts of Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties.

According to Holmes’ letter, they were considered at “low risk” to miss the deadline either because they had requested an extension beyond the originally approved contract end date or because the broadband office found that they were “significantly behind” their progress timelines but have yet to request an extension from their originally agreed-upon completion dates.

A high-risk rating appears simpler, according to Holmes’ letters: the rating applies if the contractual end date is in 2026, regardless of whether it is in the original contract or results from an extension. 

At an August meeting of the state’s Broadband Advisory Council, the broadband office’s program manager said that the risk definitions were vague and broad, but the housing department wanted to cast a wide net to make sure agencies that needed help would know they could get it, and the office could let them know what options are available. 

The New River Valley Regional Commission’s project for Bland and Montgomery counties, with Gigabeam as its ISP partner, began March 13, 2023, and was scheduled to end on the same date in 2026, said Elijah Sharpe, the NRV Commission’s deputy executive director. The commission has not asked for an extension.

Byrd, the commission’s director, wrote in his reply to Holmes that his office expects to cross its final milestone, releasing its 12,094 passings, or locations, for sales on July 31, 2025. The project was funded for $39.2 million, according to the VATI Dashboard, which details years worth of the commonwealth’s broadband expansion.

“Any time you infuse that much investment, it takes a while for the entire system to come together to make the end result happen,” Byrd said in a recent telephone call. “I think that’s pretty much the case that we’re observing here is that infusion of resources came, and it’s standing up all of the project details to make the delivery happen.”

As in every other locality, make-ready work created a time drag. Engineers have to study the poles, to see if they are capable of taking on the extra load. Those plans must be submitted to the utilities, which design them for the changes. Add in new or replacement poles, and it’s an expensive and time-consuming process, organizers and stakeholders say.

The Montgomery-Bland project took on another level of involvement when it brought on Appalachian Power as a partner under the state’s Utility Leverage Program. Appalachian successfully applied to the State Corporation Commission to string fiber across 234 miles of its own poles in those counties.

Byrd wrote to Holmes that the project layout is complete, with 99 miles of fiber strung up. More than half of its make-ready and permitting is done, with construction and splicing due to be finished by April 2025. His team expects broadband will be available to more than 1,700 customers before the year ends, he wrote.

“At this point in the process, we aren’t seeing a cause for concern that would indicate different levels of risk … against the federal deadline,” Byrd told Cardinal News.

Byrd and Eric Workman, Gigabeam’s chief strategy officer, said they would be applying for a portion from the $30 million Virginia Make Ready Initiative pool. VATI will release that funding in monthly waves of $7.5 million that began Sept. 12 and will end on Jan. 9 with whatever is left. Several other project directors notified Holmes that they planned to apply, too.

Facing delays

Most of the project leaders statewide replied that they reaffirmed timely completion. Other letters expressed issues that leave their work in question. 

In a reply letter, West Piedmont Planning District Commission Executive Director Kristina Eberly asked for a 15-month extension that will take its project with RiverStreet Networks and Appalachian Power to the federal deadline. VATI granted about $33.6 million for that work, which would deliver service to about 10,000 locations.

“We experienced several delays in getting the project started, including time for our partners, RiverStreet Networks … and Appalachian Power …, to finalize partnership and fiber lease agreements, as well as a 9-month period for APCo to prepare for and receive approval from the State Corporation Commission to participate in the project,” she wrote to Homes, the broadband office executive.

Appalachian Power, as it did with the New River Valley Commission, also filed to work with West Piedmont under the Utility Leverage Program. Appalachian took three months to prepare the submission, and the SCC took about six months to review and approve it, according to Michael Armbrister, the commission’s broadband executive.

The extension, which the broadband office approved last month, moves West Piedmont, RiverStreet and Appalachian from the low-risk to the high-risk category, Eberly acknowledged in her letter. Other West Piedmont areas that RiverStreet is working are not at risk, the VATI Dashboard shows.

“Construction is now underway in all three partnering counties … and APCo is working to expand the number of crews from three to 10 and increasing resources to ensure engineering is completed ahead of schedule to keep construction moving smoothly,” Eberly wrote. “We anticipate our partners will complete construction ahead of the requested December 31, 2026, deadline; however, we will not have confirmation of that until early 2025, so we are requesting the maximum time available to complete construction.”

Keeping track of timelines

Caroline Luxhoj, the broadband office’s program manager, said during the August broadband council meeting that her office will conduct quarterly risk meetings with project managers.

“There is a process in place,” Luxhoj said in a meeting at Fredericksburg that was available for public streaming. “They are being held accountable.”

Byrd, of the New River Valley Commission, and Roanoke County’s Caywood said that they were grateful for the help.

“We have found DHCD to be excellent to work with. I think they’re very responsive,” Caywood said. “I think they’ve been really trying to help get these projects delivered. … That part has actually been surprisingly smooth and organized … I think the providers are working well with the commonwealth also, it’s just that some of these are things that are hard to do.”

They have a little more than two years to work them out.