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V.I.
Government Applies for $2.9 Million in Federal Funding
for Broadband Development
Governor John P. de Jongh, Jr. said today that the Office of Economic
Opportunity, which oversees the government’s
participation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act, has filed an application seeking funding for a
program which will perform both broadband mapping and
planning for the territory.
“The data will be a
part of our ongoing engineering process for the roll out
of the new broadband facilities in the Virgin Islands as
well as part of the support system for the ongoing
operation of the new broadband capability,” de Jongh said.
The Governor said the
program was developed with the widespread participation
from agencies and service providers in the Virgin
Islands. “Before filing our application, we hosted and
met with all existing service providers to initiate the
beginning of this effort. We met on May 21 and again on
July 31 to review specifics of the program and to
initiate the signing of non-disclosure agreements.”
Additionally, we created a Broadband Mapping Team led by
the Office of Economic Opportunity to provide the
necessary support through this project. The team
includes the Public Services Commission; Bureau of
Information Technology; Lt. Governor’s Office, Water
and Power Authority, University of the Virgin Islands,
Fountains Spatial. This team will create and verify the
initial broadband service maps and the public facing
portal. Stratum Broadband will provide strategic
infrastructure insight, technology planning expertise,
data aggregation expertise and overall project
management.
The objectives of the
project are to: support the National Broadband Map data
layer input from the Virgin Islands and plan for
projects to build up the middle mile capacity in the
Virgin Islands so as to support high-speed open access
broadband to all anchor tenant locations and expand last
mile open access broadband service using a combination
of high-speed wireless services and wired technologies
while also promoting transparency of process and
maintaining confidentiality of proprietary data from
service providers.
According to the
application, the program focuses on gathering, verifying
and disseminating data which will be used to support
broadband development and the roles of its various
participants. The data inventory will be used to
evaluate broadband needs, determine where service is
unavailable and to analyze the quality of available
service. The data will also be used for expansion and
capacity planning and for costs analysis in building the
infrastructure for areas where services are not
available and expanding capacity in underserved areas.
de Jongh
said the methods
for planning will begin with a market analysis to
determine the needs of the various communities within
the Virgin Islands. “We will meet with stakeholders,
assess capability needs, form a technology team to
prepare a conceptual approach and prepare a business
plan for initial review. This approach will provide a
quality understanding of the requirements and result in
a strong basis for future broadband development.”
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