Virginia Broadband Project Overlap Resolved

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2025 – An overlap between federal and local broadband projects funded in a single Virginia county near Richmond has been resolved.

The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 19 approved a request from RiverStreet Communications to hand back without penalty about 1,200 homes and businesses it was supposed to serve through the agency’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. 

Those locations were in New Kent County, which, after RDOF awards were greenlit, put $16.1 million toward a project by Cox Communications to get fiber to the entire county. The county has 9,034 housing units and 447 businesses, according to the Census Bureau.

“RiverStreet could not have learned of New Kent’s agreement with Cox when conducting the required due diligence prior to bidding because the agreement was entered into after RiverStreet had been awarded and authorized to receive RDOF support in New Kent,” the agency wrote in its order.

RiverStreet had actually worked on the county’s engineering plan for the network, according to local news, but New Kent ultimately went with Cox for the network after a bidding process. Most of the roughly 3,000 unserved homes and businesses have since been built out to, according to the county. Cox is planning to finish upgrading locations with existing connections by early 2026.

The money for the Cox project came mostly from the county’s budget. About $4.4 million came from the American Rescue Plan Act, which made the FCC extra eager not to duplicate federal spending. 

RiverStreet is now set to receive $37,834,200 over ten years for its RDOF commitments in Virginia, down about $2 million from its initial allotment. Not all of that is due to the New Kent locations, as the company handed back a separate six census block groups in Virginia earlier this year. It’s not clear how many homes and businesses were in those block groups.

Cox is one of the largest privately held ISPs in the county, counting more than 6 million subscribers. RiverStreet serves about 30,000 customers in Virginia and North Carolina.