en.Wedoany.com Reported - Edinburg, Virginia, USA – On May 5, 2026, Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) officially announced the completion of construction for its Virginia Telecommunication Initiative project, bringing gigabit fiber internet to over 6,700 previously unserved households in Franklin County. The total investment for the construction project was $32 million, funded in part by a VATI program grant, with the remainder jointly covered by Shentel's own capital investment and fiscal contributions from Franklin County.
The VATI program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, is the state's largest broadband deployment funding mechanism. It provides grants to local governments partnering with internet service providers, specifically targeting unserved areas where no broadband provider offers service exceeding 100Mbps download / 20Mbps upload speeds. Franklin County Administrator Steven Sandy stated in an official release that without these partnerships and funding, this service would have been many years away from becoming a reality.
Chris Kyle, Vice President of Regulatory and Industry Affairs at Shentel, noted in a statement that expanding broadband in rural areas requires sustained investment, close coordination, and a shared commitment from all parties to complete complex projects. Through collaborative efforts with the Franklin County team and the Department of Housing and Community Development, the network built connects thousands of households that previously had limited or no options to high-capacity internet service. Shentel views the project as a long-term infrastructure investment—Kyle stated that this investment helps strengthen county-level infrastructure, ensuring residents, businesses, and community institutions have the connectivity they need.
Laying fiber optic networks in rural areas offers no economies of scale per mile; continuously undulating terrain multiplies construction timelines, and coordinating pole attachments and permit approvals with power companies also takes months. Chris Kyle pointed out that Shentel is one of the few service providers willing to invest in building infrastructure in America's most remote areas. The public-private partnership model formed through the VATI project injects the respective capabilities and resources of government, local administrators, and private operators into a single project. Shentel previously used the same model to connect approximately 4,900 households in Bedford County and over 7,000 households in Shenandoah County.
Virginia's broadband landscape is shifting from policy guidance to scaled implementation. Since its launch in 2017, the VATI program has cumulatively completed broadband access for over 155,000 locations, with more than 93.4% of projects delivering gigabit speeds. In November 2025, Virginia's final proposal for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program received federal approval, directing a total of $9.75 billion to approximately 85,000 still-unserved addresses statewide. Communications infrastructure is now advancing from covered areas toward the more remote, final batch of unserved addresses.
Headquartered in Edinburg, Virginia, Shentel provides broadband services to residential and commercial customers across eight contiguous states in the eastern U.S. via its fiber and coaxial cable networks. Its business covers broadband internet, video, voice, high-speed Ethernet, dark fiber leasing, and managed network services, and it owns a regional fiber network spanning over 18,000 miles.
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