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MORGANTOWN - A five-year push to spread broadband into unserved and underserved areas across Monongalia County is going to come down to the next four months.
Through a public, private partnership with Comcast, the county is working to complete four installation projects by Dec. 31.
That's not a projected timeline. It's a deadline.
All told, the commission has dedicated approximately $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to leverage more than $20 million in broadband expansion by partnering with Internet service providers Comcast and Frontier on five deployment projects – one with Frontier, four with Comcast.
The deadline to obligate ARPA money was Dec. 31, 2024. The deadline to complete all project expenditures is Dec. 31 to avoid returning unspent funds to the federal government.
So far, only the Frontier project is complete.
In December 2024, the county put up $791,421 (83%) of a $959,519 project with Frontier to install 11 miles of fiber to target 80 unserved and underserved locations in the area of Gladesville and Halleck roads. That expansion, which was finished in October, made connections possible for an additional 170 locations in the surrounding area.
Of the four Comcast projects, the largest by far was a $17.8 million agreement with Comcast through which the county put up $5.9 million to pull in an $11.84 million private investment aimed at connecting more than 2,100 homes and businesses focused in the county's western end.
The original completion date included in the June 2024 contract passed at the end of March. During its most recent meeting, the commission extended that agreement through Nov. 1.
Commissioner Sean Sikora said the expectation is that the infrastructure will be in place to begin bringing homes online this month in parts of that project area.
"Overall, we're looking to string about 224 miles of fiber across our county, and a lot of that has already occurred. It's just getting to the in-between where there are pole connections and things like that connecting the network," he said. "Comcast is going to start to do real passing this month and will start connecting a lot of their customers. The majority of that is going to be completed by Nov. 1."
Additionally, Comcast is working on projects in the Stewart's Run, Gandalf Road (Snake Hill) and River Road areas.
While separate locations, the Stewart's Run and Gandalf Road projects were packaged together and are expected to make broadband available to more than 120 homes. The county provided $944,593 of the $1.48 million total cost.
Comcast is also working on a $175,377 project paid out of the county's general fund to lay 1.8 miles of cable to connect eight to 10 households off of River Road.
Sikora said pole attachment permits have been a complicating factor, explaining, "The biggest delay to date has been the issue with attaching to the poles because First Energy has been inundated with requests from everybody out there, so that's caused a bit of a delay in some of the Comcast projects."
Even so, Sikora said he's confident the projects will be completed by the Dec. 31 deadline.
"We are not sending these dollars back to the federal government. It has to be done by the end of the year," he said, explaining he's been convening regular update sessions with Comcast and the county's project consultants in recent months. "Yeah, we understand there's been a lot of issues with the electric company, but they've been a good partner and we don't want to pile on them. So let's all three get together and communicate how we can best get some of these permits done and get building on a lot of these areas so that it's all going to come together.”
He continued.
"I could sit here and say, looking over this, did I think three years ago that we'd still be here really trying to just get the main network connected so we could start connecting people? Probably not. But when you step back and think of all the money that's been thrown at broadband ... I really do believe that we're still ahead of the curve."
Ultimately, time will tell.
"I think the future of broadband in Monongalia County is really positive. I don't know where we are in other parts of the state, but I'm really anxious, once we get to the end of this year, to take an overall analysis of our county and see where we stand versus where we were five years ago, when we initially did our comprehensive broadband plan."