ARC Broadband Project Inching Along

At the July 11^th Pocahontas County Broadband Council meeting, Cory Nipper of the Thompson and Litton Company (T&L) reported that the “Make Ready Pole agreement to use Frontier poles for the ARC Power Grant Broadband Project has been submitted to the WV Department of Highways (DOH) as part of the process to obtain the necessary pole project approval from DOH. He added that they have not received any feedback on this from District 8 of the DOH as of yet.

Even when that is accepted by DOH, Nipper said, they will still need to submit the entire project to DOH, however before they can do that, they must first come up with an estimate of the full construction cost to complete the project, since DOH requires that the County Commission approves sending them a 5% performance bond based on that construction cost before DOH will approve their pole permit for the project.

Ruthanna Beezley of the Greenbrier Valley Economic Development Corporation said that they will need to immediately ask the County Clerk to include consideration of that 5% bond at their July 16^th meeting because the commission is required to post the agenda at least three business days prior to the meeting. Beezley said that they can provide the commission with an estimated construction cost and ask them to approve a bond “not to exceed” 5% of that estimate. However, Region 4’s Amanda Smarr said she believes the commission will need an exact amount of the bond before they can approve issuing a bond to the DOH. Region 4 Director John Tuttle said we should still get it on the agenda for the July 16^th Commission meeting.

Mike Holstine asked both representatives of T&L – Nipper and Brian Tew- if after the DOH District 8 receives all the paperwork and the bond, do they have any idea of how long it will take the DOH to actually approve their pole permit? Tew said he doesn’t know since it is “hit or miss” with District Eight. Nipper agreed but guessed it would be at least 30 to 45 days for DOH District Eight to process and approve the permit.

Regarding other ongoing broadband projects affecting the county, it was pointed out that the Spruce Knob/Seneca Rocks Telephone Company’s project is still moving forward, but is still in the paperwork design phase.

All other future broadband project opportunities seem to be associated with the National Telecommunication and Information Administration’s (NTIA’s) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program and those, Tuttle said, won’t be awarded until 2025.

Tuttle suggested that the council ask Frontier to come before the County Commission and explain what they are doing regarding their BEAD applications and their RDOF project. He said they recently did this in another county, presenting a map of the addresses they are considering for their BEAD project in that county. Marlinton Mayor Sam Felton said that sounds like “the same old same old” from Frontier, however Beezley said we should still encourage Frontier to come before the commission and update their plans.

Mike Holstine said there has been nothing new happening about the attempts to reduce the financial pressures on small ISPs who cannot afford the required 10% line-of-credit performance performance bond and to put up a 25% local match in order to apply for BEAD grants. He said there had been talk that BEAD might reduce the 10% performance bond, but will not budge on the 25% local match.

Mike O’Brien reported that the 911 Center sent in 6 ARC Arise Grant applications a week ago and are still awaiting a response. He also said the building of a T Mobile Cell Tower in Durbin is on hold since T-Mobile is finalizing their purchase of US Cellular. Additionally, O’Brien said the Pocahontas County 911 is joining other 911 centers in a lawsuit against Frontier, however the judge handling that has sealed all information about that case from the public.

Finally, Amanda Smarr said she has been redesigning and updating the broadband maps and will send the links to them to the council’s website (pocahontascountybroadband.com) soon.