Broadband Toolkit Assists Virginia's Rural Communities

Photo: VITA Secretary Aneesh Chopra

How can rural local governments expect development without broadband access? It's hard to imagine doing business without high-speed Internet, yet most broadband providers won't touch a locality that doesn't have the population to make service profitable.

The Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) is trying to help local governments change that. The agency recently announced a toolkit downloadable from its Web site that guides rural localities to existing resources that may help make broadband a reality.

For example, Virginia law allows local governments to make available for free any public-sector radio tower to a private-sector broadband provider. A WiMAX provider could attach a transmitter to a tower and avoid the cost of building its own.

In turn, many local governments could also attach WiMAX transmitters to private-sector towers for free, said Aneesh Chopra, the secretary of VITA.

"Most localities have zoning rules whereby private-sector towers often come with clauses that allow the localities to use some of that tower real estate to address public-sector priorities. Broadband communications is increasingly considered one of them," Chopra said.

VITA's toolkit also shows localities how to attain tax-exempt loans from the Virginia Resources Authority, a state lending organization, for purchasing broadband infrastructure. The process involves establishing a local "wireless broadband authority" to access the state loans.

Local governments that don't have the staff and expertise to write the broadband request for proposals should pay attention to a Virginia rule highlighted in the toolkit pertaining to attracting broadband providers. Under the rule, established in 2007, localities can invite a vendor to write a proposal, which the city can publish as its own. That saves governments from tediously rewriting terms and conditions from the vendor document, which they're often not qualified to rewrite anyway, said Chopra.

Once a local government picks its chosen path, the toolkit offers the required documentation.

"It includes all of the documents you need so that once you choose the tool, you don't have to draft 500 pages of legal documents. We've already got the templates, so just take them and modify them so you don't have to start from scratch," Chopra said.

Sometimes a city or county has more purchasing power for broadband than it realizes. The toolkit features an online calculator designed to help governments take inventory of those funding sources.

"The calculator will ask things like, 'How much money does your local government spend on its phone bill and Internet bill? How much on schools and their IT? How about your fire and safety? What about your local health clinic? Are you wiring up your local doctors? Is your local hospital involved?'" Chopra said, later adding, "If you go through the checklist, you're going to bring in more revenues than you thought."

Without the aid of its toolkit, VITA estimates that local governments would need two years to devise local broadband strategies.

"We want that to be less than six months," Chopra said.