Virginia to receive $220 million federal grant to expand broadband networks for high-speed internet

Virginia will receive $220 million in federal grants to build out its broadband telecommunications networks to offer affordable high-speed internet service across the state.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Tuesday that Virginia would be one of the first states in the country — along with West Virginia, New Hampshire and Louisiana — to receive grants from a $10 billion capital projects fund created in the American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed into law 15 months ago.

The grant to Virginia was the largest of the four and will allow the state to expand high-speed internet service to almost 78,000 homes and businesses, about 28% of the users still lacking broadband access in the state.

Virginia officials already had anticipated the grant when then-Gov. Ralph Northam proposed to use more than $700 million to expand broadband networks, including $500 million from the $4.3 billion the state received from the American Rescue Plan to help states, cities and other localities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state will use the money to provide grants to local and regional broadband projects through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, which also is expected to benefit from a $65 billion fund created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to expand high-speed internet networks and make access to them affordable for families that previously have been left behind by either location or income.

“It’s not going to be a question of lack of capital,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a conference call conducted by the White House on Monday afternoon to preview the grant announcement.

Under the program, internet providers must deploy networks with service at minimum speeds of 100 megabits per second for downloading or uploading data. They also must participate in the Affordable Connectivity Program to provide service for no more than $30 per month to an estimated 48 million families eligible for the discount across the U.S.

VATI, as the state program is known, receives applications from local governments, which partner with internet service providers and utilities to expand broadband access to residents.

“In the next few years, there should not be any excuse why virtually every home ... shouldn’t have full high-speed broadband connectivity at an affordable rate,” Warner said. “We’ve just got to make sure we implement it well.”

Warner highlighted the importance of the grant by touring Northern Virginia Community College’s medical education campus in Springfield with Gene Sperling, senior adviser to Biden.

They will view viewed a hybrid course in radiation oncology that high-speed data networks will allow students to attend at Virginia Western Community College in the Shenandoah Valley as well as the Northern Virginia campus.

The White House highlighted the roles that Warner; Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., played in the passage of both the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed in October as a bipartisan legislative achievement.

“There shouldn’t be any American left out,” said Manchin, whose state received a $136.3 million grant from the capital projects fund.

Evan Feinman sees a big payoff for the telecommunications program he helped establish in Virginia as broadband adviser to Northam, as well as the state’s share of the national “broadband equity access and deployment program” he will direct for the Biden administration.

In addition to the American Rescue Plan funds already allocated by the General Assembly and the new grant, he said the state will be in a position to benefit from the funds for broadband under the infrastructure act.

“Virginia is hugely advantaged by the head start it has relative to other states,” Feinman said Monday.