By Matt de Simone
Botetourt County households now have an opportunity to experience the power of fiber-optic Internet. The 2020 pandemic limited many local citizens from attending events and vacations. While many struggled to transition into a new way of life for the time being, Botetourt County administrators worked diligently to provide the community with a chance of obtaining a resource that many households and businesses in the surrounding areas have yet to encounter.
Over the course of the next few editions, The Fincastle Herald gives subscribers a closer look at the process of building a “backbone” of fiber-optic lines across Botetourt County to expand the area’s broadband power and increasing the possibilities of new businesses, land value, and instant, high-speed access to the latest in streaming entertainment.
Laying the foundation
Four years ago, Botetourt County Administrator Gary Larrowe set in motion a plan to bring the county out of the “dark ages.”
A Broadband Commission was established with Botetourt County Board of Supervisors Chairman Dr. Max Scothorn taking the reins in leading the project moving forward. One of the main initiatives was a broadband summit in 2018 that included a survey conducted by those in attendance revealing over 65 percent of the population had broadband access.
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) established the base metric definition of “broadband” as 25 megabits per second download and three megabits per second upload (25/3 Mbps). As technology advances by the minute, this definition will inevitably change. Even with a bump, the potential broadband speeds in Botetourt would likely surpass the next metric established by the FCC—not just by a little, but by a lot.
In 2019, Botetourt County and Craig-Botetourt Electric Co-op (CBEC) received a grant from the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative (VATI) to provide over 600 homes and over 50 businesses fiber-to-the-home internet access—roughly 55 miles of coverage.
“This was a new business venture [CBEC] was getting into,” Larrowe explained. “They had some advantages. One, they owned their own electric poles and they were going to everyone’s home anyway, so this became natural for them to build an additional fiber plant. CBEC made it available for their customers to hook on.”
Last year, the building of the fiber lines began amidst the pandemic. The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, Lumos, Lit Communities, and the CBEC worked on the expansion. The county’s $3 million in funding from the CARES Act deployed the broadband while leaders and the Broadband Commission continued to decide the best way to continue using the funding toward to the project.
Larrowe felt the effects of the global pandemic. He lost family and friends to COVID. However, he continuously wanted the community to come out of a horrible year stronger and prospering. Last March, at the onset of a nationwide lockdown, Larrowe suggested to the Board of Supervisors that the one thing that would be positive about the pandemic would be the deployment of broadband throughout Botetourt County.
That is where this story began to take off. In coming weeks, Larrowe and key leaders in this process will explain the expansion and the trials that came along with providing Botetourt County with an opportunity to take one step closer to the cutting edge of Internet capabilities.
As more information regarding locality and timelines are reported to subscribers, Botetourt County created a website to further explain the specifics of the broadband expansion. Some of that information will be made available in this series.
For an in-depth look at the broadband project, visit web.botetourtva.gov/broadband. The website provides maps where subscribers can learn about the project’s history, scope, and maps displaying the affected areas in the community.
