CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Some of the most remote areas of Mingo and Logan County may soon get the infrastructure to have high speed, broadband internet service. Those extremely rural areas will get the service delivered in large part by Appalachian Power.
“Utility poles and power lines already go into the deepest hollows and most remote areas of the state. Mingo and Logan County have a lot of that, so it just makes sense for us to use that infrastructure to hang middle-mile fiber,” said Appalachian Power Spokesman Phil Moye.
The company recently submitted an application to the state Public Service Commission for approval of the project. The application calls for installing 430 miles of middle-mile fiber optic cable infrastructure needed to expand high-speed broadband access. The cost of such work is projected to be just over $61 Million dollars, money the company proposes to makeup with a surcharge.
The project plan calls for internet service provider GigaBeam Networks of Bluefield, Va., to own, install and operate the last-mile infrastructure needed to deliver broadband services to customers in the project area. GigaBeam will have access to the middle-mile facilities in phases as construction progresses. The phased-in approach will allow GigaBeam to coordinate its equipment installations with middle-mile construction and connect new broadband service customers on a rolling basis throughout the construction process.
Installation of fiber isn’t a new concept for Appalachian Power. Moye said they’ve already done a considerable amount of the work for their own use in many areas.
“We have a lot of fiber already. We’ve already got about 2,000 miles of fiber in West Virginia which we’ve installed and we maintain for our own internal purposes,” he said.
For not the scope of Appalachian Power’s proposal is limited to the remote areas of Mingo and Logan Counties because those were the subject of a feasibility study sought by the legislature and submitted several years ago. West Virginia lawmakers passed legislation in 2019 allowing electric utilities to submit broadband feasibility studies, and later that year the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council unanimously approved Appalachian Power’s feasibility study for the Logan and Mingo project. Further legislation passed in 2020 specified the PSC’s role in approving plans and associated cost recovery of middle-mile broadband projects submitted by electric public utilities in the state.
“Logan and Mingo County made good sense because there’s not a high penetration of customers who are already served with broadband access and it’s one of those difficult, remote areas where it makes sense for us to use our existing infrastructure to build that fiber network,” Moye added.
The power company reasoned the cost associated with others trying to build the infrastructure which they already have would make the whole project cost prohibitive. According to Moye, it can be compared the the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930’s when the push was made to extend electric power to every home in America, including those in the most rural and remote areas of the nation.
“Broadband expansion is the same way. Just like we did rural electrification decades ago, this is using that same infrastructure to bring this modern technology into areas that are difficult to serve,” he said.