The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) has released a case study that aims to quantify the value of fiber broadband to a community.
The case study focuses on Charlottesville, Virginia and the surrounding area. It found that high speed, low latency broadband accounted for about 35% of the private sector job growth between 2015 and 2019. Housing value increased $4 million annually and microbusinesses thrived.
The dominant provider in the report is Ting Internet, which announced plans to purchase 70% of fiber provider Blue Ridge InternetWorks in late 2024. The fiber case study area also is served by Lumos, Comcast, Firefly Broadband, Brightspeed, and others.
An important finding in the case study is that broadband fiber has been a boon to microbusiness in the area. The study used GoDaddy’s definition of a microbusiness as one with 10 or more employees, a domain, and an active website.
“Charlottesville is among the highest-ranking cities in Virginia for Digital Microbusiness Density, a key indicator of small business health,” according to the report’s conclusions.
“A combination of factors can be attributed to this ranking, but primarily among them is the infrastructure and availability of reliable, high-speed broadband that enables small businesses to make their goods and services available to customers around the world and allows them to tap into labor and services far outside of Charlottesville’s geographic boundaries.”
The fiber case study found that Ting’s investment in the city stimulated the growth of connectivity elsewhere in the county. Those outside the city limits sought the ability to work from home and telemedicine, particularly services offered by the University of Virginia.
The FBA has been busy. Earlier this month, it issued the second edition of its annual report on fiber deployments. It showed that 40% of respondents deployed fiber underground and 16% aerially. It was conducted in association with Cartesian in October and November of last year.
