Fiber-optic project will bring fast Internet to Eastern Shore

The Internet and cable technology have become staples of modern life - in homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. But on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the 21st century has been slow to arrive.

Service is available in Accomack and Northampton counties, but outages are frequent and access is limited. Some communities still rely on slow dial-up connections, and remote sections of the Shore cannot surf the Net at all.

The void is expected to change beginning next month, when crews are scheduled to start extending high-speed fiber-optic cables from Cox Communications in Virginia Beach across the Chesapeake Bay to the southern tip of the Eastern Shore.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved this initial link, a 30-mile crossing, late last month. Because of the anticipated public benefits, the commission chose to assess a minimal impact fee of $100; it could have charged $80,000 in state royalties for approval.

The cables, each containing 144 different fibers, will be hung on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. They then will be routed toward Cape Charles, away from sensitive wildlife refuges and land protected by The Nature Conservancy.

From Cape Charles, officials with the Eastern Shore of Virginia Broadband Authority expect to lay a backbone open-access line north some 60 miles to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility near the Maryland border.

Spurs to individual towns and communities - lines called "the Last Mile" by organizers - would follow if money is available. The towns of Chincoteague and Onancock, for example, are awaiting word on grant applications to construct "community networks," officials say.

High-speed service could start for the first recipients - schools, the local hospital, emergency responders - by late next year, officials say, with the Shore fully connected as early as 2012.

"We have to be in the 21st century," said Barbara Schwenk, who has worked on the project with the Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission, which advises the two counties on the Shore. "It's the only way we're going to survive."

The project has been in the works for about two years and involves local, state and federal money.

Virginia's U.S. senators, Jim Webb and John Warner, have helped secure $6 million in federal aid through congressional earmarks to NASA, which operates a flight center and research facility on Wallops Island.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development also has supplied money, though the Virginia Tobacco Commission has not.

The commission has dedicated millions from legal settlements with the tobacco industry to broadband projects in rural parts of Virginia where tobacco farms once flourished. Because no tobacco was grown on the Eastern Shore, it received no such aid.

"Money definitely has been our biggest challenge," said Cheryl Tyson, who manages the Eastern Shore of Virginia Broadband Authority, a quasi-government body established under state law in April.

Tyson said local government had to use public funds to bring high-speed cable to the Shore because private companies were not interested.

With a sparse population spread across a wide, flat landscape, private cable providers did not think multimillion-dollar investments in laying a new network would bear fruit, she said.

The authority does not wish to become a cable company once the backbone and last-mile lines are installed. Instead, it hopes those same private providers will then come calling and offer "bundled services" to homes and businesses wanting more cable TV and phone options as well as high-speed access to the Internet, Tyson said.

"It's about increasing competition, lowering costs, increasing services and providing the basic computer technology that most businesses now require," she said. "Or, as I like to tell people, bigger pipes equals cheaper and faster service."

One of the biggest selling points of the project, Tyson said, is health care.

The Shore has trouble retaining well-trained doctors and nurses. But with access to the Internet, those professionals might want to stay. And if they leave, local facilities can utilize "tele-medicine" and "tele-health" to better assist patients, Tyson said.

A 2007 study conducted for the Broadband Authority found that 32 percent of residents and 13 percent of businesses still used dial-up Internet service. Many of those "express frustration with unreliable service, citing network outages that last days instead of hours," according to the study.

Schools showed "the greatest bandwidth need," the study found. Tyson said, for example, that local school administrators cannot conduct Standards of Learning exams at the same time as processing payroll checks.

Libraries are handicapped by limited access, and some businesses have been forced to install satellite connections, which carry high costs.

High-speed cables are expected to lure new businesses or at least keep those considering a move to a new, connected location, said Schwenk, the planning official helping with the project.

She said more people are working from their homes on the Shore, or are buying second homes there, and need high-speed service.

Schwenk herself is looking forward to a new, cyber-friendly era.

"I'm one of those people who lives on the outskirts and can't get any access at home," she said.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com