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Hampton explores joining Southside Network Authority to bring transatlantic MARIA cable capacity across the water
Summary
City CIO David Williams and Southside Network Authority representatives outlined a plan to extend an ultra-high-speed regional fiber ring to the Peninsula, citing the MARIA subsea cable, an estimated $15 million build cost for Hampton and Newport News and a $250,000 planning phase for asset/needs assessment and conceptual design.
David Williams, Hampton’s chief information officer, briefed the City Council work session on Oct. 26 about a regional broadband initiative to extend the Southside Network Authority’s fiber ring — which connects to the MARIA transatlantic subsea cable in Virginia Beach — across the Hampton Roads waterways to the Peninsula.
Williams told council the MARIA cable links a Virginia Beach landing point to Europe and represents very high capacity fiber. “These are the fastest, this iteration is the fastest cable in the world,” he said, adding a characterization provided by a vendor that the capacity is many millions of times faster than consumer gigabit services. The city’s stated objectives are to increase economic-development competitiveness, bring high-speed service to unserved and underserved neighborhoods, and support local government operations.
Staff described a five-phase approach proposed by the Southside Network Authority: asset assessment, needs assessment, conceptual design, detailed engineering and build. The immediate proposal is to fund the first three tasks (asset and needs assessment plus conceptual design) at an estimated combined cost of $250,000; staff said a full backbone build to link Hampton and Newport News was preliminarily estimated at about $15 million. The Southside Network Authority’s executive director said much of the work can be coordinated in parallel and estimated that the assessment and conceptual design phase could take roughly five months.
Presenters and the authority’s executive director discussed possible partnership models: an ownership/participation model in which Hampton and Newport News would join the authority (the Southside localities originally invested roughly $5 million each) and share governance and benefits. They described options for public–private partnerships and leasing the backbone to service providers so incumbent and new internet service providers would be able to offer competitive last-mile service. The authority noted annual maintenance commonly runs at roughly 10% of initial build costs as a planning assumption.
Council members asked about timelines, maintenance costs, security and how the backbone would enable multiple retail providers to compete. The authority representatives said the backbone is passive transport infrastructure and that retail providers or managed-service vendors would supply the network intelligence and security to customers; they said the presence of a regional backbone reduces the capital cost for providers to serve underconnected areas and can improve competition and pricing over time.
City staff said they have set aside money in planning and requested council feedback about proceeding with the $250,000 assessment phase; staff will return with formal terms for authority participation if council wants to advance to a membership decision.
