Accelerate Virginia Partnership
Franklin County is partnering with Va.Tech's eCorridor's "Accelerate Virginia" initiative to assist with capturing data of broadband service and availability in Virginia.
**UPDATE** 12-15-10 - - - Franklin County Residents Participate to Help Map Virginia Broadband.
A week ago Franklin County residents were asked to assist the County with participation with Accelerate Virginia’s Internet speed test campaign. Citizens are encouraged to run Internet speed tests from their homes and businesses to help develop an accurate map of existing broadband service locations in the county. The data collected from the Accelerate Virginia speed tests will be used to demonstrate where and what kind of Internet services are currently offered to county residents.
The plea for citizen participation is providing Accelerate Virginia with a substantial amount of data. The County and eCorridors is very appreciative of the response and want to extend this to as many county citizens as possible. Citizens that have no broadband service or no way to conduct the speed test have called Accelerate Virginia’s Jean Plymale (contact information below) to have their address registered in the database. Ms. Plymale is also logging those addresses with the Federal Communications Commission as being a ‘broadband dead zone’ for the citizens.
Please log your results if you have not already done so and notify your neighbors, family and friends to also participate and contribute to Franklin County’s participation in this campaign. The resulting mapping data will help not only the state of Virginia but hopefully our County.
The Accelerate Virginia campaign, led by the Virginia Tech’s eCorridors group, is conducting other localized Internet speed test campaigns throughout the state. eCorridors is asking all Virginians to run an Internet speed test, available at
www.acceleratevirginia.org/speedtest, from their homes and businesses. This new data, along with other sources, will be used to develop the next iteration of the Virginia broadband map.
For more information about Accelerate Virginia or reporting a Broadband Dead Zone, please contact Jean Plymale,
vplymale@vt.edu at (540) 231-2270 or (540) 231-8490.
Virginia Tech's eCorridors program is dedicated to work with communities, private sector and local governments to expand advanced Internet services. They have started the
"Accelerate Virginia" initiative to engage and educate the public and raise awareness about broadband availability in Virginia.
Their new speed test will enhance the Virginia map that is being produced based on provider data, showing broadband availability and options throughout the state. Accelerate Virginia will use this data as a research tool to assess availability, affordability and quality of broadband across the state.
Please help this initiative by Testing Your Internet speed and contributing your data to this important effort!
Remember to select "Fixed Wireless from a WISP" if you have service with our wireless partner, B2X.
