U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher announced today that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, through its Recovery Act broadband grant program, is providing a federal grant of $9,237,760 to Citizens Telephone Cooperative, headquartered in Floyd, for a major expansion of its broadband network.

“The federal funds will enable the construction of a middle-mile fiber optic network 186 miles in length in Wythe, Pulaski, Giles, Floyd, Montgomery, Roanoke and Botetourt Counties and the City of Radford,” Boucher said. “The project aims to spur new connections and improve high-speed Internet access services for thousands of homes and numerous businesses, schools and other community institutions.”

With the benefit of the federal funds, Citizens will add 186 miles of fiber to its current fiber optic network, which today includes 247 miles of fiber optic cable. The new middle-mile network will bring broadband lines within a short distance of New River Community College’s campuses in Dublin and Christiansburg, Radford University, Virginia Tech, 31 public K-12 schools and several medical facilities, public libraries, and public safety facilities as well as hundreds of homes and businesses.

The new middle mile network will provide these institutions with access to speeds between 10 Mbps and 10 Gbps and will provide many of the institutions with diverse routing, a redundancy which eliminates the potential of network outages.

In addition, the project provides a critical diverse route between the Virginia Open Access Network, now known as Lit Networks, a partnership of Mid-Atlantic Broadband, MBC, Bristol Virginia Utilities and Citizens Telephone Cooperative, and the Alleghany Highlands fiber optic network.

The total cost of constructing the new middle-mile network is $11.5 million. In addition to the more than $9.2 million in federal funds, the Virginia Tobacco Commission is providing $463,100. The New River Valley Network Wireless Authority, a partnership between Giles and Pulaski Counties, will provide $830,000, and Citizens Telephone Cooperative will provide $538,204 and an additional $491,730 in the form of in-kind engineering services.