Hampton Roads service providers, city leaders push for broadband expansion amid pandemic

Jan 01, 2024

Almost immediately after the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and sent workers to their home offices, internet traffic skyrocketed in the region, according to J.D. Myers II, senior vice president and regional manager for Cox Virginia.

Two years-worth of traffic went online for Cox in just a few weeks.

"Two years of capacity upgrades happened right in one month," Myers said, measuring the traffic in terms of network improvements.

The huge increase in Hampton Roads internet traffic has spurred service providers and local governments into action as they try to expand access to what is increasingly becoming an essential utility, according to an Oct. 30 panel sponsored by the Hampton Roads Chamber.

"It's the ability to get on a Zoom call," said Andria McClellan, Norfolk City Council member. "It's the ability for your kids to access their classrooms remotely and have access to their doctors for telehealth."

For Cox, the increased traffic meant speeding up years of planned network upgrades, Myers said. The company has completed two years-worth of upgrades in just six months, he said, and is banking on the theory that network traffic will continue like this even after the pandemic. The bandwidth upgrades allow the network to both meet residential demand during the pandemic and allow customers to participate in activities that demand faster data transfer speeds, like Zoom video calls. Cox has spent $500 million on its Hampton Roads network in the past three years, according to a spokesperson.

A few of the network upgrades even led to some adverse effects. A botched installation led to one mid-October outage in Norfolk, and a patch led to another a few days later, Myers said.

The gap between those who have or can afford broadband access and those who can't has become very apparent for John Littlefield, director of technology for Suffolk Public Schools. Because of the divide, some students don't have access to their coursework, and even some teachers and staff members don't have consistent internet access.

"It's definitely impacting our instruction in a negative manner right now," Littlefield said.

The pandemic has also placed a renewed importance on the Hampton Roads Fiber Ring — an estimated $25 million, 100-mile-long regional fiber-optic cable network connecting the five South Hampton Roads cities. The network, which would be funded either by cities or a public-private partnership, would serve as a backbone for the region. Service providers, city infrastructure and academic institutions would then be able to connect to the network. Eventually, the network would connect with another larger, regional ring network being developed by cities on the Virginia Peninsula.

With the ring in place, industries like finance, cloud services and biotech would have a bigger incentive to move to and grow in Hampton Roads, McClellan said. Everything from city infrastructure to flooding alert systems to self-driving cars could be made possible with the network.

"Essentially, what we think we are doing is ‘future-proofing’ the 757," McClellan said.

Project leaders completed a 30% design plan for the fiber ring in January 2019. A 60% design, develop and construction cost estimate and business case analysis is expected to be completed by mid-November. Project construction is tentatively planned to begin in 2021 and conclude by the end of 2022.

Cox, which has six million total customers in 18 states, delivers high-speed internet access to most of Hampton Roads. Its only major competitor is Verizon's FIOS broadband service, which has franchise agreements with Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Newport News, Hampton and Poquoson. Verizon has long been unresponsive to calls from Norfolk residents to bring FIOS to the city.

Trevor Metcalfe, 757-222-5345, [email protected]

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