By Marty Gordon
Facebook is working with localities in the New River Valley to provide better high-speed Internet connectivity. Tuesday the Christiansburg town council approved a franchise agreement with the company’s subsidiary Middle Mile Infrastructure (MMI) to bring a data line through the community to join a similar one in Floyd County. The project is part of a larger effort to build a fiber optic network from Ohio to North Carolina, giving communities like Christiansburg the opportunity to plug in.
The company has not released the total monetary investment into the project, but it could stretch into millions of dollars when completed.
Early reports have the corridor, which is over 1,100 miles, here locally stretching down North 460 to North Franklin Street to West Main and then along Route 8.
Construction on routes 8 and 221 have been ongoing for the past few months in Floyd County. The corridor begins in New Albany, Ohio, and finishes in Forest City, North Carolina.
Kevin Salvadori, MMI’s director of network investments, said they intend to allow third parties — including local and regional providers — to purchase excess capacity on MMI fiber. “This capacity could provide additional network infrastructure to existing and emerging providers, helping them extend service to many parts of the country, and particularly in underserved rural areas near our long-haul fiber builds,” he said.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice held an official groundbreaking for the project, which has been dubbed the “New River Project,” last November near Tamarack in Beckley.
“I truly believe that we need to take every opportunity that we can to continue connecting West Virginia to the outside world,” the governor said at the groundbreaking. “And increasing access to broadband through a project of this magnitude is the perfect way to do that. Access to high-speed Internet opportunities will allow us to bring in new people and businesses, which will lead to more great jobs.”
Facebook’s investment is expected to result in better Internet speeds and will improve Internet connections across West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina while expanding connectivity.
Facebook is based in Menlo Park, Calif., and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg. It is considered one of the Big Five technology companies along with Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Facebook has acquired Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, and independently developed
Facebook Messenger, Facebook Watch and Facebook Portal.
Salvadori pointed out the company will not provide individual fiber services to consumers, instead this is for carriers and operators. Facebook currently has as many as 14 data centers, which will receive better connectivity via this data corridor.
“Access to broadband Internet drives economic growth and opportunity, but there are still too many unserved communities,” Salvadori said. “We see the need for long haul fiber as an opportunity to provide critical infrastructure where it did not previously exist. To that end, we’ve designed our project to attract potential local and regional providers to expand broadband Internet access for the communities surrounding our builds.”
Construction is set to begin in Christiansburg in June and July and will take 18 to 24 months. The community will be given as many as 12 connections to the corridor.
