Fiber Optic Co-Op May Bring New Business

By Denise Allen Membreno

A thoroughfare has made its way through the area that will allow you to travel at blazing speeds to destinations all over the world. Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative has laid a pipeline, a fiber optic infrastructure down Virginia 122 through Franklin and Bedford counties and now it is making its way up U.S. 220 to Roanoke.

“It’s the highest speed, fully redundant network in the Commonwealth and it’s the level of service you would typically only find in Northern Virginia or the Silicon Valley [Calif.] in the United States,” said Scott Martin, director of commerce and leisure services in Franklin County.

MBC is a not-for-profit cooperative formed in 2003 by a group of regional business leaders to revitalize the economies of communities formerly dependent on the tobacco industry.

The Virginia Tobacco Commission is an outgrowth of the 1998 National Tobacco Settlement involving 46 states. Half of the settlement money coming into the Commonwealth has been earmarked for economic revitalization of areas in states once dependant on tobacco.

A task force was created to determine the best course of action for getting the latest technology into the rural area of Southside and Southwest Virginia. A report prepared by Virginia Tech outlined some options.

“One of the potential models was a cooperative approach which is very much like the telephone and electrical cooperatives created in rural areas in the 1930s,” explained Tim Pfohl, VTC Grants program director. “The commission decided to take the cooperative approach and signaled that to Mid-Atlantic.”

MBC received $42 million in grants from the VTC and $6 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration for capital such as more fiber routes or towers.

MBC created a business plan to build more than 700 miles of new fiber optic infrastructure. It uses the latest optical network equipment and owns the facilities. The network is now operational and growing larger.

“We didn’t want Mid-Atlantic going door to door trying to sell this,” said Pfohl. “We want them to be the folks that own and operate this system and then are encouraging the local internet providers to become members and then offer the service to businesses or individuals.”

“We get calls once a week from people saying, ‘Your fiber passes by my house. Why can’t I just tap into it?’ ” added Tad Deriso, MBC General Manager. “But because we’re a wholesale network, we’re not designed to service individual homes. If you are a business spending $500 to $1,000 a month on telecom services, this network makes more sense and is more affordable.”

So MBC is built into industrial parks. For Martin or developers like Trey Park, who work at selling the area to businesses, the addition of MBC is huge.

“That type of redundant broadband access out here is one of the key factors when a business is looking to relocate, especially a government type business,” said Park, developer of Lakewatch Plantation. “We have a big business park out here. I think of businesses like a think tank or call center would work well here.”

“Everything is set up on redundant loops. So if someone sticks that backhoe into the line on Route 122, the traffic on that loop just reroutes on that loop so there is no interruption of service,” said Pfohl.

“It’s vital. It’s incredibly important in two ways,” he said. “One is: the availability of broadband allows us to market ourselves as a destination for things like data farms, server farms. Those are the high-dollar, very quiet, very secure, very large investments that run things like Google. I’ve heard when you do a Google search, you actually turn on something like 14,000 computers and those computers have to be housed somewhere with a network like MBC.”

The other aspect Martin said Franklin County is still trying to figure out is how to get this service to individual residents. That is the second-generation use that county IT employees are working out with area providers.

“The backbone we’ve built is having a tremendous impact on the availability and cost of advanced telecom services and that’s what is really driving the interest and excitement of the network in the telecom industry,” Deriso said of the buzz that the network is causing inside and outside Virginia.

Park said he has spoken to representatives of government entities interested in moving to the area. Southside is already capitalizing on the fiber optic infrastructure. The recent opening of an Ikea plant in Danville is one example. The connectivity provided by the network allows the Danville plant to have direct contact with the company’s plant in Sweden.

Deriso said the network continues growing. “We’ve got a new fiber being constructed from Rocky Mount to the Roanoke County line today [May 20]. We’re connecting some new carriers in the Roanoke market.”

Technology is improving rapidly. Deriso said he expects “more and more penetration of wireless broadband for residences and small businesses.” He said new technology will allow a signal from a tower strong enough to serve a 20-mile radius, a signal that is not dependent on line of sight.

That could mean those of us who live down in the “holler” right off the gravel road might soon be able to join other folks who cruise the Internet at hyper-speed. I am waiting for them to build me an on-ramp. Right now, my Internet speed is like a slow walk in the park.

(c) 2008 Roanoke Times & World News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.