Virginia Shifts $700 Million In Relief Funds To Boost Rural Broadband Access

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/ [login to see] /virginia-shifts-700-million-in-relief-funds-to-boost-rural-broadband-access
Tony and Debbie Steffey are retirees who live on a fixed income in southwest Virginia, and they're desperate for internet. To get it, they'd have to pay $10,000 for a fiber line to their double-wide trailer in the community of Carbo.

"We don't have it, we have no choice," Debbie Steffey, 67, said of not having the money to pay for the construction of a line.

"We don't even have email or nothing," added Tony Steffey, 65.

It's the Steffeys' desperation that sent them to an event Friday in Abingdon, which is close to some of the state's most restricted areas for broadband access. They wanted to talk to U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia to find an answer to their internet woes.

There, at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, Warner joined Gov. Ralph Northam, both Democrats, and other state officials to announce a massive infusion in internet service access. In all, Virginia will direct $700 million drawn from pandemic relief funds to boost broadband access and help close the digital divide for some of the poorest regions of the state.