This neighborhood shows the challenges of bringing broadband to all Virginians

Alan Jamison remembers the day he noticed a stranger poking around his neighborhood near west Salem.

Jamison engaged him in a chat. The man, a surveyor working for internet service provider Shentel, was looking at ways to get fiber-optic cable into the area and told Jamison that it was coming.

“‘Cable won’t come over here. Phone won’t come over here. You’re not going to come over here,’” Jamison recalled telling the surveyor.

The neighborhood is one of three state-funded broadband expansion projects in Roanoke County, paid in part with pandemic-era federal dollars in the 2022 fiscal year. And of the three, it’s the smallest. The zone is home to 177 potential broadband customers that Roanoke County and Shentel are trying to connect.

It is fewer than 2 miles, even less as the crow flies, from Salem’s Main Street, but it’s entangled among multiple railroad tracks and Roanoke River tributaries — not to mention the river itself.

That makes for a logistical quagmire.

Roanoke County Administrator Richard Caywood, whose office is overseeing the projects, wrote to the state’s Office of Broadband that the county might transfer the work from Shentel to another company nearby.

Many issues hamper completion, including 11 railroad crossings and one stream crossing, Caywood and his assistant, Madeline Hanlon, said in a phone conversation. Some of the Salem Electric Department’s utility poles were not suitable for further attachments, which led to more complications, Hanlon said.

All told, this tiny portion of a larger objective is a prime example of what broadband expansion projects face, regardless of whether their work affects a couple of hundred people or thousands.

Jamison’s neighborhood is among 36 projects that Virginia funded in 2022 with its $1 billion Virginia Telecommunication Initiative. About $750 million of that is American Rescue Plan Act money, and those dollars come with a time component: Spend it by Dec. 31, 2026, or the government takes back the rest.

The commonwealth’s lawmakers added $30 million to the budget this year to help spur the process. The money infusion came with a directive that the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, which is in charge of the money, send letters to the projects that it believes are at risk of blowing that 2026 deadline.

The housing department’s Office of Broadband sent letters detailing risk levels to 22 projects — that’s nearly two-thirds of the 36 it funded in 2022. Eleven of them are in Southwest and Southside Virginia, according to letters acquired via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Among those 11 is the snarl of river and rail where Jamison lives.

Card games and swing sets

Jamison has lived at the end of his street for 16 years. He and his family have tried a local satellite company, but seasonal leaves blocked transmission, he said. They’re using streaming and data from their cellphone company, and it can be spotty, he said.

“We get the [playing] cards out,” his niece-in-law, Alexis Bennett, said with a laugh as she wrangled one of the dogs they were walking. She and Jamison’s nephew rent a house on his property, so they experience the same connectivity issues.

In a world that has become increasingly focused online, some still rely on 20th-century entertainment.

The county is “considering all options” regarding whether it transfers the work from Shentel to another company, Hanlon said. There is another provider with a plant set up nearby, which might reduce some of the crossings, Caywood said.

VATI granted the project $490,000.

“There are so many problems with the Shentel project that it really started to make it financially unfeasible,” Caywood said. “It looked like there was an opportunity to do it more efficiently, so we’ve been working with [Housing and Community Development], Shentel and the other potential provider to see if we can’t … deliver the same project. We’re still in the process of working through all that.”

Tracks from two different railway companies run in the area, he said.

“These homes are in the middle of the two sets of tracks, and then there’s some spurs off of those rail lines,” Caywood said. “So that’s why you end up with all these crossings because these folks are essentially surrounded by train tracks, and then you have the [Roanoke River] on one side … and that’s why it was so challenging to get there. … It’s not that many homes, but they’re surrounded by all these things that require crossing permits.”

Among a list of issues, the railroad crossings were most problematic, Shentel spokesman Bryan Byrd said.

Virginia lawmakers passed legislation in 2023 that would both streamline the work process and lower what railroads can charge internet service providers to cross their tracks. But when Cox Communications began to use the law at a couple of eastern Virginia crossings, both Norfolk Southern and CSX sued in federal court .

While the railroads asked a judge in Virginia’s Eastern District to find the law unconstitutional, they also appealed Cox’s plans to the State Corporation Commission, as the new law provided. The SCC found in Cox’s favor, then Norfolk Southern and CSX appealed to the state Supreme Court, which has yet to schedule hearings. The federal judge stayed further action until the Virginia high court issues its ruling.

“The railroad obviously refused to recognize that legislation,” Byrd said. “And when the lawsuit with Cox came out, that kicked off some difficult internal conversations where we basically had to kind of decide between getting this thing done in a timely manner and getting sued.

“Then when those risk determination letters came out, that was kind of a focal point for us to sit down and kind of have those blunt conversations and say, we could complete this project, right? I mean, if we just pay gobs and gobs of money and get all the [timeline] extensions we can to manage through these railroad issues, we could complete it. But there’s an increasing level of risk with how difficult the railroads are being.”

Through all the project engineering and re-engineering, Shentel discovered that another provider has facilities that already span some of the railroad crossings.

“We felt that being a good partner would require us to have a conversation with the county,” he said. “We opened that up with the county and with the [Department of Housing and Community Development], and that’s kind of where we are right now. I think the county is still working with the DHCD and another provider to confirm whether they’re able to take it over, and if so, what that new design, new timeline, new cost structure, all that would look like.”

Both the county and Shentel declined to identify the other provider, as they remain in the discussion stage.

A grant from the $30 million Virginia Make Ready Initiative would require completion within 120 days, and working with both Salem Electric and Appalachian Power to deal with pole design and engineering would blow that timeline by a lot, Shentel Vice President Chris Kyle said.

“We like that fund, and we’re going to utilize it with our other projects,” Kyle said. “But it’s just not the right fit for this one.”

Shentel also has projects in Shenandoah, Bedford, Campbell and Franklin counties, and has already strung enough cable in Roanoke County to service about 70,000 potential customers, Kyle and Byrd said. But they haven’t seen anything like this little patch that they are ready to hand over to another company.

“This is potentially, you know, one of the absolute hardest-to-reach groups of 177 homes, not just in Roanoke County, but goodness, potentially in the commonwealth,” Byrd said.

Kyle credited Caywood and other county staff members for their commitment and flexibility and said they will continue to work together.

“It sure is beautiful out there,” Kyle said. “But it’s … been complex as we’ve unraveled this.”

Jamison, semi-retired, sometimes works from home for fire and security alarm manufacturer Keltron Corp. But if he needs to use a virtual private network for the job, he has to leave the house for a better connection at the Salem Public Library.

“I would love to have it” at home, he said.

Another resident, Jesse Cook, said he has lived in the neighborhood since 2018. His family has tried satellite dish internet, multiple telecom companies, Jetpack Wi-Fi hotspots and, most recently, wireless broadband from Salem company B2X.

“It’s pretty good,” he said, as his 13-year-old daughter rose and fell on her swing set. “I mean, it’s not bad. … We’re thinking about maybe trying [satellite-based internet provider] Starlink, but we haven’t done anything with it yet.”

Meanwhile, county officials keep working to bring cable to a neighborhood where card decks, board games and backyards see more action.

Correction: Virginia’s Department of Housing and Community Development oversees the state’s broadband expansion programs. One reference to the agency was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.

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