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For a second straight year, Rockbridge County has not been successful in securing grant funding through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative to complete a broadband build out to the remaining unserved or underserved areas in the county.
“This is incredibly disappointing,” said Rockbridge County Administrator Spencer Suter. “We have been working to deploy broadband since 2012, and have had many successes over the years, but to be looked over the second straight year in the VATI process is painful for those of us still dealing with slow speeds and low bandwidth.”
Undaunted, Suter pledged to continue trying to get the funding. “We are not going to quit trying. The instructions from the commonwealth in the latest grant round was to ask for everything needed to provide universal broadband, and to provide as much match funding as possible. That’s exactly what we did. Unfortunately, the amount of funding designated for broadband at the state level this year was not nearly enough to fund all the requested projects.”
Rockbridge partnered with BARC Electric Cooperative, Brightspeed (formerly Century Link) and the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission to apply for a total of $23.5 million through VATI. The county’s local match was to be nearly $4 million of the county’s $4.4 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act funds.
However, with less than $60 million in available grant funding statewide, and more than $300 million in requests statewide, the county came up short in its funding request.
The county, BARC and Brightspeed will continue to press toward broadband deployment, with or without grant funding, said Suter, indicating they are shifting gears to seek federal funds directly, in addition to any state funding that might be available in the next budget.
