Virginia’s Long Road to Universal Broadband

When Virginia first invested $1 million into broadband in 2017, it wasn’t leading the country. It was testing what a state-led model could look like. Today, Virginia has secured $545 million in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding and is overseeing nearly $1.5 billion in total federal broadband investment. But the story isn’t just about dollars. It’s about execution. Through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, Dr. Tamarah Holmes, Director of the Office of Broadband, helped grow a modest state program into a $750 million deployment engine. The jump from $19 million to $750 million in just two years stress-tested every part of the ecosystem. “We broke every possible system it takes to get broadband into folks’ homes,” she said, from pole attachments and railroad crossings to utility locates and permitting bottlenecks.