New era of infrastructure — Broadband key to growth of rural regions

The need for speed — online speed, that is — is increasing. And, regrettably, we are located squarely between two large markets that ranked among the least wired in the country, according to a recent broadband market use survey.

The Southwest Virginia region around Roanoke and Blacksburg came in dead last in a Scarborough Research report that measured broadband use in 79 U.S. markets, with only 29 percent of adults reporting high-speed Internet connections in their homes.

Ranking one above Southwest Virginia was the Charleston/Huntington market, which reported only 33 percent of high-speed Internet connections in homes, tying with the Fresno-Visalia, Calif., region.

The low number of high-speed Internet connections in the Southwest Virginia region paled in comparison to the rest of the nation, which quadrupled broadband use from 2002 to 2007, according to the Scarborough Research study.

According to the Associated Press, the report was surprising to some in light of two recent awards — one designating Roanoke as the top digital city for its population in 2006 and another that named Blacksburg as the most-wired city in the world in the 1990s.

“This is not a statistic that you would include in your economic development prospectus,” Andrew Cohill, president and chief executive officer of Design Nine, a Blacksburg company that advises communities in broadband and telecommunications planning, told the Associated Press.

“It’s very important to have widespread availability and affordability of broadband, especially from the home (for telecommuters),” he said.

We agree, and we’re proud to note we are more fortunate than some rural markets in regard to access to high-speed Internet.

Last year, the area’s fiber-optic backbone went online, providing high-speed access from Claypool Hill, Va., along U.S. Route 19/460 through the towns of Tazewell and Bluefield, and an eight-mile corridor of Mercer County in West Virginia before connecting with the Interstate 77 corridor in Bland County.

The 206-mile fiber-optic backbone was funded by $4.6 million in grants secured through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration and $5.2 million in grants provided by the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

Key to the success of the fiber optic backbone was U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who began encouraging local governments throughout Virginia’s Ninth District to explore the deployment of broadband networks more than a decade ago.

“My goal in making this recommendation was to set our region apart in comparison to other rural areas of the nation, to make us more attractive than the typical rural region to industries looking to expand their operations into new locations, and to create technology-based jobs for Southwest Virginians,” Boucher said last year when the new grid went online in Tazewell County. “Our region has made major strides since that time.”

The recent Scarborough Research report should serve as an important reminder to officials across both Virginias on the importance of broadband access.

If we are to ensure future economic development in the region, we must be connected to the rest of the world via the Internet. While age-old transportation methods, such as highways and airports, remain important, future progress will also be determined by our broadband infrastructure.

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