CVEC’s Firefly Nabs $12.2 Million Of $41 Million In New Virginia Broadband Grants

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s (CVEC) Firefly Broadband subsidiary has been awarded a new $12.2 million grant from the state of Virginia. The award will help fund a major update to an already massive effort to extend affordable broadband to vast swaths of rural Virginia.

According to a cooperative announcement, the $12.2 million in Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI) grant funding will be used to help fund a broader $48.6 million partnership with Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, Dominion Energy, and county governments.

These current VATI funds were largely made possible by federal COVID relief legislation passed in 2021. Such ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding saw fewer overall restrictions and greater flexibility than infrastructure bill funding (BEAD) authorized the same year, resulting in states more quickly doling out funding for emerging broadband deployments.

“The fiber construction project will span approximately two years, covering 603 miles and reaching nearly 6,000 additional eligible locations in the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Buckingham, Campbell, Fluvanna, Goochland, Greene, Louisa, Madison, and Powhatan,” CVEC said of the plan.

Image

CVEC and Firefly’s expansion into unserved Virginia comes after the cooperative first finished an ambitious, $130 million plan to install over 4,500 miles of fiber-optic cable across 14 counties, providing broadband internet access to all of its 39,000 members.

After successfully connecting its electrical customers to fiber, CVEC and Firefly shifted their focus to RISE, a $330 million collaborative effort between the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission (TJPDC) and the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).

RISE is being funded by a $79 million VATI (Virginia Telecommunications Initiative) grant administered by TJPDC, $209 million in local and private sector matching funds, and additional financial contributions by partner counties. Overall, the project aims to bring affordable fiber broadband to 45,000 locations and 112,000 Virginians.

“Thanks to the critical funding provided by the Virginia General Assembly and made available through the VATI program, we can now assure that every family and business in central Virginia will have access to reliable, affordable internet service equivalent to the best in the United States,” Firefly CEO Gary Wood said of the latest award.

Cooperatives Continue To Lead The Way

When Virginia submitted its Five-Year BEAD Plan to NTIA, it noted how state leaders would look to electric cooperatives to play a major role in closing the digital divide there through “partnerships with investor-owned electric utilities and electric membership cooperatives.”

Now, a century after cooperatives helped paved the way for rural electrification, they’re applying those same lessons to rural broadband expansion – first using federal Rescue Plan funds before the state receives its $1.5 billion BEAD (Broadband Equity Access And Deployment) allocation.

Roughly 850 different U.S. electrical cooperatives currently serve an estimated 42 million Americans, including 92 percent of counties facing persistent poverty. Such counties are particularly prone to broadband underinvestment, limited competition, and counterproductive lobbying by the nation’s biggest, most politically powerful, telecom monopolies.

Image

The parallels between modern broadband expansion efforts and rural electrification efforts are hard to miss. CVEC was formed in 1937 when only 10 percent of Central Virginia’s rural population had access to electricity. And, like many cooperatives, CVEC is leveraging that experience to bridge the state’s long standing digital divide, buoyed by an historic infusion of broadband subsidies courtesy of federal Rescue Plan and infrastructure legislation.

When we checked in with CVEC on project progress last summer, CVEC officials said they had just finished deploying 3,600 miles of new fiber, passing 40,000 total homes and businesses, connecting 20,000 state residents–many for the first time ever–in less than 52 months.

Buoyed by additional assistance including a $28 million combination loan and grant from the USDA's ReConnect Program, Firefly provides Virginia locals symmetrical 100 Mbps (megabits per second) fiber for $50 a month, and symmetrical 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) service for $80 a month with no long-term contracts or data caps.

As a result, many rural Virginians are seeing broadband speeds and prices that aren’t even available in more populated, metropolitan areas. In part because, like most states, Virginia is dominated by regional telecom monopolies like Comcast that often see little pressure to compete on price, speed, coverage, or customer service.

CVEC VP of Communications Melissa Gay and Firefly CEO Gary Wood spoke with ILSR about some of the challenges faced by the network build, as well as many of the frustrations locals had with substandard and unaffordable broadband access, for Episode 358 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast.

“Now that all 38,000 members of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative have access to reliable, affordable fiber broadband, Firefly Fiber Broadband has launched the RISE project to expand connectivity to another 40,000 households and businesses in central Virginia,” Gay told ILSR.

Part Of A Larger $41 Million State Grant Award Round

CVEC’s $12.2 million award was part of a larger $41 million in grant awards announced late last month by the state of Virginia and VATI. For this latest round of grant awards, DHCD says it received 25 applications requesting more than $170 million in VATI funding.

A full award breakdown can be found at the state’s website, and include Spotsylvania ($10.3 million, 3,740 locations), Franklin ($4.5 million, 2,543 locations), Giles ($4.1 million, 629 locations), Alleghany ($2.3 million, 370 locations), Orange ($2.1 million, 425 locations), Rockbridge ($975,000, 293 locations), and Botetourt ($395,000, 62 locations) counties.

Image

“Virginia continues to be a national leader for closing the digital divide, and today’s announcement brings us one step closer to becoming the first state in the nation to reach statewide universal broadband coverage,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said of the latest awards. “In our increasingly digital world, having access to high-speed broadband isn’t a luxury; it’s a prerequisite to participate in daily life.”  

Virginia officials note that since 2017, the state has invested more than $850.3 million to connect 388,000 homes, businesses, and anchor institutions across 80 municipalities. More investment is yet to come in the form of $1.5 billion in BEAD (Broadband Equity Access And Deployment) broadband funding made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill.

Header and inline images courtesy of CVEC and Firefly Broadband