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Broadband goes south
Virginia Business
August 2004
Where
there’s smoke, there will soon be wire. Twenty
counties in the tobacco-growing region of southern Virginia
are slated to get 700 miles of fiber-optic cable in
an investment that state and local officials hope will
bring in businesses.
The $12 million Regional Backbone/Roots of Progress
Initiative, announced in June and funded by the Virginia
Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization
Commission and the U.S. Economic Development Administration,
will make high-speed Internet access available to 700,000
people and 19,000 businesses.
Work is scheduled to begin in October with completion
expected by early 2006. Gov. Mark Warner called the
initiative “a dramatic leap forward” in
rural Virginia that “will certainly get the attention
of new employers and investors looking to tap the potential
of Southside and Southwest Virginia.”
In fact, officials estimate that the new network will
bring in more than $140 million in investments and create
1,560 new technology-based jobs and $70.2 million in
wages. Within three years of project completion, proponents
also expect that 75 percent of 35 “targeted”
business, commercial and industrial parks will have
attracted a minimum of two new technology-based businesses.a
WIRED
The cable initiative will connect these localities:
Cities:
Bedford, Danville, Emporia, Lynchburg and Martinsville
Counties:
Amelia, Appomattox, Bedford, Brunswick, Buckingham,
Campbell, Charlotte, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Franklin,
Greensville, Halifax, Henry, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg,
Nottoway, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Prince Edward and Sussex.
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