Proposed Microwave Backbone Route from Winchester, Virginia to Parkersburg, West Virginia
Source: West Virginia Broadband Cooperative

The West Virginia Broadband Cooperative is being organized to plan, design, build, and operate proposed a fiber and microwave backbone that will connect unserved and underserved areas to the Internet.

This project, which is the vision of Mark Bayliss, President of VisualLink Internet, addresses the underlying reason that secondary markets and rural areas are often unserved or underserved, namely high transport costs. Cooperatives in Virginia and Maryland have been able to reduce the costs of connecting to peering points, which has resulted in a significant increase in the deployment of broadband.

Clarendon Foundation has been working with civil and electrical engineers to design the fiber optic -- microwave backbone. The planned route for the backbone is Route 50, the first highway to cross the country. This road traces the trails that were used by early American pioneers on their moves westward.

A second purpose of the project is to attract data centers to the state of West Virginia, which has the lowest cost commercial electricity rates, and also the lowest level of broadband penetration. The revenues from the data centers will create the economies of scale that will further reduce operational costs for the members of the cooperative.

It is anticipated that an application will be submitted for funding as a BTOP project in the first filing window.

For more information, see "West Virginia Broadband Cooperative: A Carrier-Neutral Fiber Optic & Microwave Broadband Backbone.“ [PowerPoint] [Microsoft Word] [Adobe Acrobat]