For Central Virginia Electric Cooperative member Amy Franklin, the era of the long commute is over.
For 26 years, she’s been making the daily hour-roundtrip from Appomattox, Virginia, to her job in Lynchburg. Now, thanks to cutting-edge broadband provided by her co-op, she can save the wear and tear on her vehicle, and work from home.
“I knew this would open new doors for me,” said Franklin, who said she religiously checked every CVEC newsletter to make sure the project was on track. “I’m grateful to Central Virginia Electric Co-op for leading the way in opening up doors that I never thought would happen.”
Franklin was among about 100 co-op members, staffers, guests and dignitaries at a March 26 celebration of CVEC’s high-speed internet, called Firefly Fiber Broadband. The project has started off on a small scale around Appomattox — it includes bringing the Civil War site into the wired age — but eventually it will be available to all 37,000 co-op members, according to President and CEO Gary Wood.
“We have found that the community has really accepted it. They love it,” Wood said. “But this is just the celebration of the start. We’ve got a long way to go and we’re going to get there.”
The CVEC Board backed the $110 million endeavor in November 2017 even though, as Wood put it: “We had no design, no material. We had no money. We had no name for it. We had didn’t have any fiber.”
But support from the Rural Utilities Service, the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission and Appomattox County helped pave the way for the launch of a projected 4,600 miles of fiber cable.
“The lessons you’re learning with the rollout of the fiber here in central Virginia is going to be really important to what other co-ops and communities are doing,” said Paul Breakman, senior director for Business and Technology Strategies at NRECA, who spoke at the event.
The lost economic value of no access to broadband is about $2,000 per household, he noted. “It’s a huge economic building block for the communities.”
Based on the Central Virginia experience, Wood offered some advice for co-ops looking to get into high-speed internet — and it begins with the backing of the local board.
“Make sure your board is fully on board. You can’t step in this and check and see how it’s going to go. You need to stay out, or, when you decide to do it, go do it. You’ll have people questioning when something didn’t go right — there’s going to be a lot of those — and that’s when you need the backing of your board.”
On a practical level, it’s important for co-ops to find great partners in broadband. “You are going to go through friction. You are going to go through difficulties. You’ve got to have people that you can trust, that you can manage your way through with. That goes for the design firm, the contractors, and the business partners.”
And it’s important to manage member expectations, Wood added. Firefly has a robust online presence that explains exactly when construction will start in different parts of CVEC’s service territory.
“When you tell people, ‘I’m coming in five years; we’ll get everything done,’ they’ll hold you to that. Five years in a long time and you need to make sure they understand what that length of time is like.”
Gary Wood, president and CEO of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, makes an enthusiastic point about the co-op’s new Firefly broadband service. (Photo by VMDAEC)
Gary Wood, president and CEO of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, and Firefly mascot Flash give broadband a thumbs-up. (Photo by VMDAEC)
