As a follow-up to last week’s ARC Broadband Celebration at Pocahontas County High School, I wanted to add a reminder to people who may not know.
Numerous individuals have worked in the last few years to make last week’s announcement possible.
Mike Holstine has worked on bringing fiber to the county for the last 20 years. A huge portion of his collaboration has been with Jim Martin, CEO of Citynet. Jim is a native West Virginian with a can-do spirit. His determination to bring his company’s service to our county cannot be overstated. Note: Speaking at the celebration, I loved the way Mr. Martin spoke directly to the students in attendance. The improved broadband service coming to the county will help with their future employment opportunities, from local family farm operations to potential entrepreneurial endeavors, and everything in between.
The other two individuals worthy of recognition are John Tuggle of Region 4, who spoke at the high school, and Jason Roberts, of Region 1.
In 1971, the state was divided into 11 Regional Planning and Development Councils. Pocahontas County is blessed to be represented by John Tuggle and the Region-4 staff. Marlinton has benefited from Region 1 programs also.
I wanted to share that in about 2016/17, both regional councils received monies to pursue broadband. John and Jason chose to pool their funding. Both councils, consisting of 11 counties, joined forces under the banner of the Regional Optical Communications (ROC). The ROC partnership enabled the hiring of T&L Engineers.
This was a major step forward with the completion of a statewide broadband study, which soon turned into a 19-county coalition.
ROC later worked with data gathered from these counties which became part of a 55-county statewide broadband study completed by The Thrasher Group. Thrasher worked with ROC to examine every serviceable address in the state to determine a route to bring fiber to each location. Ultimately, more than 14,800 miles of preliminary fiber routes were created, with associated cost estimates.
The only undetermined numbers that remain will be the immeasurable impact that accessible and affordable broadband will bring to West Virginia.
