In March, Loudoun County released a Request for Expressions of Interest – a variation on a Request for Interest (RFI). With this broadband RFI, Loudoun County set out to find Internet providers to partner with county government in an application for the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative grant.
After delaying the response deadline, Loudoun County set the due date for 14 April, 2021 for responses to be received. LBA submitted a request for a copy of all the responses and received them on 22 April, 2021.
The seven respondents to the RFI are:
- Comcast
- All Points Broadband
- Lumos (parent to Segra)
- ISTM (We could not find a website for this company)
- SE Wireless
- T-Mobile
- ZiTel (On Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ZitelLLC)
LBA believes that a second set of questions has been dispatched to each of these respondents. We do not know the status or deadline for these questions to be answered and we have requested this information from Loudoun County staff.
The public can request a copy of the RFI responses directly from Loudoun County under the Freedom of Information Act.
LBA has begun reading and evaluating the responses and will publish an evaluation and report in the near future.
As a note of apology – In February, LBA requested the public to submit questions related to the proposal submitted to the county by All Points Broadband. We anticipated an opportunity to have a public Q&A session. However, because Loudoun County officials rejected the proposal, LBA felt it would not be a fruitful exercise. We apologize for the lack of communication on this issue and pledge to do better.