SOUTH BOSTON – Former Governor Mark R. Warner and Secretary of
Technology Aneesh Chopra will visit the Southern Virginia Higher
Education Center on Friday, September 21, to further discuss broadband
deployment in Southside Virginia. The Governor and Secretary will be
joined by superintendents of school divisions, local officials,
broadband advocates, and some forty members of Governor Kaine’s
Broadband Roundtable.
The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center (HEC), through its Center
for Rural Education and Economic Development (CREED), supports public
school divisions with various preK-12 outreach initiatives and is
currently involved in the development of an educational network to
extend broadband access to schools across the region using the
infrastructure of the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative’s 700-mile
fiber backbone.  This new network may also be leveraged by internet
service providers to allow broadband access to many homes and
businesses in Southern Virginia.
The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization
Commission, to date, has invested over $33 million to create the
700-mile MBC fiber optic infrastructure.  Delegate Clarke Hogan, as
chair of the Tobacco Commission’s Technology Committee, has led the
effort to leverage that investment by encouraging superintendents,
community leaders, representatives from the Virginia Department of
Education, and many others to work together to make broadband access a
reality for schools, teachers, students, business owners, and private
residents in the most remote areas of the Commonwealth.
“We are so thankful for Clarke’s leadership, and we are honored,” said
HEC Executive Director, Ted Bennett, “that outstanding Virginians
constituting the Broadband Roundtable have chosen to visit our Center
and to learn of our model for the development of this educational
broadband network across Southern Virginia, to learn how they can help
us and to determine whether it is a model that can be replicated in
other rural regions of Virginia to solve the “last mile” connection
issues to schools, private homes, and small businesses.”
According to a press release from the Governor’s office on June 13th:
On June 13th, Governor Timothy M. Kaine announced the formation of a
Broadband Roundtable charged with developing a “last-mile”
telecommunications blueprint for advancing his goal of ensuring
broadband access for every Virginia business. The Roundtable, to be led
by former Governor Mark Warner and Virginia Secretary of Technology
Aneesh Chopra, is supported by national expert, Dr. Ted Rappaport, and
Karen Jackson, Director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Telework
Promotion and Broadband Assistance.
Governor Kaine said the roundtable will begin its work this summer,
with a final report due by July 2008.
The schedule for the group is as follows:
Friday, September 21, 2007
9:00 -10:30am - Broadband Roundtable meeting (open to public)
The Prizery (next door to the Southern Virginia Higher Education
Center) 3rd floor Banquet Hall, 820 Bruce Street, South Boston, VA
10:45 – 12:00pm Demonstrations of educational network technological
capabilities (open to public), The Prizery, Chastain Theatre
12:00 – 1:00pm   Lunch (by invitation only), The Prizery, 3rd floor
Banquet Hall