Two Virginia Middle-Mile Projects Receive BTOP Funding

White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra announced today that the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative and the Virginia Tech Foundation, Inc., will receive Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grants of $16 million and $5.5 million, respectively, to extend open-access, middle-mile fiber networks to two of Virginia’s more rural areas: the Southside, including Danville, Emporia, and Martinsville; and Appalachian Virginia, with a 110-mile fiber route connecting Blacksburg and Bedford.

Today’s announced awards are part of the first round of BTOP funding, which is part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding and which is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Today’s awards bring the total of BTOP infrastructure, public computing center, and sustainable adoption awards to about $228 million, with $97 million of state mapping awards having also been made. There is still more than $4 billion in BTOP funding to be awarded, including second-round funding. The application window for second-round BTOP funding begins later this month and closes March 15.