Isle of Wight County supervisors voted unanimously on April 17 to approve a broadband internet antenna array proposed for one acre off Old Stage Highway.

The project was first proposed more than a year ago.

VB Edge LLC, a subsidiary of Boca Raton, Florida-based Vertical Bridge, published a public notice in the Times’ July 31 edition stating the company plans to erect “an array of one to six structures no greater than 25 feet in height” near 7094 Old Stage Highway. A similar announcement was published in January 2024.

A conditional use permit application that Syracuse, New York-based Pyramid Network Services and landowners Elizabeth Chabot, Joseph Epps and Deborah Epps Dashiell submitted in October states the site would consist of five 12-foot-tall ground-mounted antennas that would provide high-speed internet to subscribers in unserved and underserved areas of the county.

County staff said a specific radius that would be served by the antennas has not been provided.

According to a report by county staff, the antennas would communicate with low-orbit satellites. The 4,424-square-foot compound would be surrounded by a 6-foot-tall fence and landscaping, and be set back roughly 775 feet from the road and 1,100 feet from the nearest residence.

The site is part of a nearly 240-acre farm. The remaining acreage would continue to be farmed, according to Dashiell. She said the existing topography and planned landscaping would largely obscure the site from the view of passing motorists.

Dashiell said her family doesn’t have reliable internet service.

“I recently had two children, one in college, one in high school, and literally had to drive them somewhere else during COVID so they could do their schoolwork,” she told supervisors.

Vertical Bridge, according to its website, is the largest private owner and operator of communications infrastructure in the United States and has more than 500,000 owned and leased sites nationwide, including wireless and broadcast towers. Its wireless carrier partners include in-flight broadband provider Gogo, TDS Telecom, US Cellular, Cellular One, Boost Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

It’s the latest in a series of recent projects to expand broadband availability to rural areas that lack connectivity.

Isle of Wight County is separately partnering with Charter Communications, the area’s dominant internet service provider, on a $37 million regional expansion of high-speed internet availability across the rural areas of Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the city of Suffolk. In 2022, Sites Unlimited Inc. pitched Smithfield town officials on the idea of placing a Verizon cellular tower in the Pinewood Heights neighborhood-turned-industrial park behind Smithfield Foods’ meatpacking plant, though that proposed tower remains in limbo. Surry County achieved universal fiber-to-the-home availability in 2022 by partnering with Dominion Energy and Prince George Electric Cooperative subsidiary Ruralband.