Prince George Electric Cooperative subsidiary RURALBAND has paused its plans to expand high-speed internet access into northwestern Isle of Wight County.

Charter Communications, the region’s dominant internet service provider, broke ground in 2022 on a then-$37 million fiber optic buildout across rural areas of Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the city of Suffolk unserved by Charter’s Spectrum cable modem network. Meanwhile, RURALBAND was awarded rights through a competitive Federal Communications Commission bidding process to bring broadband to several hundred address points in northwestern Isle of Wight bordering Surry County, where RURALBAND completed its buildout of universal fiber-to-the-home coverage in 2021.

Charter says its buildout is on track to be complete by this summer. RURALBAND says its project is on hold, but says it’s still committed to eventually moving forward.

Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson said the county has “been advised that RURALBAND is not planning to extend broadband further into Isle of Wight County.”

“We are in the process of working with Charter to develop a plan to continue to address the areas of the county that remain unserved,” Robertson said.

As part of its regional buildout, Charter was several years ago awarded 1,839 Isle of Wight “passings” through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF, the federal program that allows internet service providers to compete for the right to provide service to specific census blocks. A passing refers to any physical home or business address that is able to be connected to an internet service provider’s network.

Charter was awarded an additional 1,378 passings through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, or VATI, which in 2022 contributed $22.7 million in state funding toward Charter’s buildout plans.

RURALBAND was awarded its own RDOF grant for 22.1 miles equaling 209 passings in Isle of Wight in 2019. RURALBAND was awarded an additional 52 miles, or 224 passings, through the Connect America Fund, an FCC grant to expand broadband to unserved areas, for a total of 443 address points in northern Isle of Wight.

The RDOF bidding process, according to RURALBAND spokeswoman Brittany Tann, involved multiple internet service providers bidding on the same census blocks, while the VATI grant, which RURALBAND did not win, was via an application with the state Department of Housing and Community Development. The CAF II auction, according to the FCC’s website, saw 103 bidders win $1.49 billion over 10 years in 2019 to provide fixed broadband and voice services over 700,000 locations in 45 states.

“ISPs bid on areas they are in a position to serve,” Tann said.

 

Why RURALBAND paused its plans

Prince George Electric Cooperative CEO Sarat Yellepeddi and RURALBAND General Manager Justin Harville said that in 2024 RURALBAND partnered with AES, the developer of the 1,750-acre Cavalier solar farm that now spans the Isle of Wight-Surry county line, to extend broadband availability to roughly 50 homes near the site.

Prince George Electric, which operates as a nonprofit cooperative, depends largely on gaining a sufficient number of new customers to break even with the cost of RURALBAND’s expansion, they said.

“We shoot for a 50% take rate,” Harville said.

But only three, or 6%, of the now-served addresses in proximity to Cavalier had taken advantage of the available service after a year. Surry’s 2021 buildout, by comparison, saw a nearly 50% take rate, or roughly 2,000 homes out of just over 4,040 addresses with access. Charter declined to disclose the take rate for customers served by its regional buildout.

Harville and Yellepeddi said the cost of the raw materials used in broadband expansion have risen substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic. They say the cost of materials is even more of a moving target due to the Trump administration’s on-and-off tariffs.

RURALBAND, they said, is currently focused on completing universal fiber buildouts in Sussex and Dinwiddie counties, which are on track to be completed by the end of this year or early 2026.

RURALBAND announced in December that it was accepting applications for several streets in Sussex. At that time, according to a RURALBAND news release, there were more than 6,000 address points across Prince George, Sussex, Surry and Dinwiddie counties that had not signed up for service.

Once the Sussex and Dinwiddie buildouts are completed, the plan is to pivot to exploring alternatives to get the Isle of Wight expansion back on track.

“We want this essential service to be made available to every resident,” Yellepeddi said.

 

Alternatives in the works

When Jenni Connolly learned six years ago that RURALBAND was planning to expand its high-speed internet service into parts of northern Isle of Wight County, she was excited. But her Lawnes Neck home wasn’t listed on a 2022 RURALBAND buildout map.

Her only affordable option at the moment, she said, is through the cellular provider T-Mobile via towers serving the far more densely populated city of Newport News on the opposite side of the James River from her waterfront home.

“It goes out probably more than a wired cable system would,” Connolly said. “… If I just walk down my driveway it’s dead; there’s nothing there.”

Some of her neighbors use Starlink, a satellite internet network developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but “it’s very expensive,” Connolly said.

Connolly isn’t the only frustrated homeowner. In April, Isle of Wight County supervisors approved a conditional use permit allowing a broadband internet antenna array proposed for an acre off Old Stage Highway that would be developed by VB Edge LLC, a subsidiary of Boca Raton, Florida-based Vertical Bridge. The five 12-foot-tall ground-mounted antennas would communicate with low-orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet to subscribers. Landowner Deborah Epps Dashiell told supervisors in April that she was motivated by a lack of reliable internet service in the area.