A BRIEF HISTORY OF BROADBAND INTERNET INITIATIVES, RESEARCH AND ACTIONS IN LOUDOUN COUNTY
- Since the early 2000s, rural underserved areas of Loudoun County have been stuck playing catch-up with the rest of the county when it comes to quality and affordability of broadband services. Through years of resident complaints at County Broadband Summits and Communication Commission meetings, it has always been known that broadband in rural areas has been and still is a rapidly growing issue.
- In 2012-2014, the County released the Atlantic Group to perform a Gap Analysis for Wireless Facilities to determine challenges facing wireless broadband and cellular coverage in the County.
- In 2018-2019, the County put together and adopted their Proposed Broadband Strategic Plan. during this time, CTC was asked to evaluate the current state of broadband in western Loudoun County and presented their findings.
- In 2019-2020, the County awarded SEGRA a contract to build a dark fiber wide area network to connect a list of schools and county owned facilities.
- In September 2020, three members of the Board of Supervisors (Kershner, Buffington and Chair Randall) were successful in advancing BMI #16, Emergency Broadband Implementation Plan to “expedite the deployment of broadband to underserved and unserved areas of Western Loudoun County …”
LOUDOUN COUNTY RESEARCH, INITIATIVES AND ACTIONS EXPLAINED
Loudoun County Proposed Broadband Strategic Plan (June 21, 2018)
The Proposed Broadband Strategic Plan explains reasons for adopting such a plan and uses performed research going back to 2005 to show the continued challenges still present today. This report can be helpful to show the County’s perspective on the state of broadband at that time, what had been done to date and possible steps moving forward.
CTC Study Spring 2018, Report dated February 2019
In the Spring of 2018, CTC (Columbia Telecommunications Corporation) was asked to evaluate the current state of broadband in western Loudoun County. CTC performed market research to identify needs in residential and commercial markets, discussed challenges to expansion with ISPs, performed cost analyses for various expansion scenarios and analyzed possible federal funding opportunities.
CTC’s findings showed that while residents of western Loudoun County had access to a mix of internet services, “… robust broadband services are not uniformly available there – as they are in the more densely populated eastern portion of the County.”. It was also stated that ISPs are not willing to expand to rural areas due to business economics (cost outweighing potential profits) and that current federal funding would be a challenge due to how program rules are structured. CTC estimated a cost of $130 million for a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) in western Loudoun and that without such an investment, though, “the County could pursue less costly strategies that might move the needle in important ways – such as through County investment in middle-mile fiber to support ISPs that seek to expand their services.”.
County Summary: BOA Business Meeting Action Item 11f (July 18, 2019)
Board of Supervisors Business Meeting Action Item #19c (date of meeting: December 3, 2019)
In December 2019, the Loudoun County BOS adopted the County’s Broadband Strategic Plan. This action item also awarded a contract for a dark fiber wide area network to connect county owned facilities. SEGRA was the recipient of this award and has since started building this network.
Action item 19c also stated that in addition to improving the county’s broadband infrastructure, Lumos (SEGRA) “will offer broadband infrastructure connectivity by making middle mile fiber available to private carriers to extend broadband to underserved areas in the west. This scenario would be accomplished by the installation of excess fiber (as part of the build out of the PWAN) in western Loudoun County, to allow Lumos to extend fiber to private providers such as Wireless Internet Service Providers and cable carriers. Lumos would be responsible for attracting and contracting with potential Internet Service Providers willing to lease fiber access for the expansion of broadband to rural residences and businesses.”
Board of Supervisors Business Meeting – Board Member Initiative #16 (September 15, 2020)
Supervisor Kershner, Supervisor Buffington and Chair Randall brought forth this initiative to expedite the deployment of broadband to underserved and unserved areas of western Loudoun County. This renewed focus discusses the new norm of distance learning and working from home and how important broadband expansion is more than ever before.
The BMI includes a 5-point plan to:
- Reduce processing times and costs for wireless infrastructure applications.
- Expedite the dark fiber buildout by SEGRA to county owned facilities.
- Overlay information from the Wireless Gap Analysis with the dark fiber wide area network to provide a project tracking system.
- Identify funding to complete the $4.8 million portion of Item in the dark fiber wide area network to expand to Bluemont Community Center, Philomont Community Center, Philomont Fire & Rescue, Loudoun Heights Fire & Rescue and Loudoun Heights Public Safety Radio Tower.
- Identify additional solutions that would merit consideration by the Board of Supervisors.
*The above section is LBA’s review of events based on public information available from Loudoun County at www.loudoun.gov.*