Southwest Virginia’s most important infrastructure project — a 200-mile, high-speed OC48 fiber-optic backbone — is nearly complete. Final connections are expected to be made late this summer. According to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, the line provides service to Bluefield, Wytheville, Abingdon, Lebanon, Claypool Hill, Richlands and points in between.
A proposed third phase of the project would extend the broadband line from Vansant to Clintwood for an additional 47 miles. The project is being funded largely by the Virginia Tobacco Commission and Community Revitalization Commission, which gets its money from Virginia’s share of the national tobacco settlement negotiated nearly a decade ago.
One of the best things that Virginia ever did for Southwest Virginia — and the Gilmore administration deserves credit for this — is to use the proceeds from the tobacco settlement to underwrite economic development initiatives for the tobacco-growing regions that would be hardest hit by the decline in tobacco cultivation. While some of the projects financed by the Commission are of dubious value, the decision to extend a fiber-optic trunk line into isolated counties ignored by the major telecommunications companies was indubitably a good one. High-speed Internet access is a prerequisite for almost every business today. No longer is the lack of such access a stumbling block for doing business in Southwest Virginia.
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