Fiber-optic service brings Danville together

It’s something you can’t really see or hear or feel, but Danville Utilities’ fiber-optic broadband system is quietly whirring away in the city’s background, quickly connecting Danville’s government, schools, businesses and medical communities to each other and the world beyond.

The open-access system, dubbed nDanville, provides high-tech connectivity — the infrastructure needed for high-speed Internet, television and telephone connections. The utility itself does not provide services to individual customers — just the network. Private, for-profit service providers purchase access to the system and provide services such as high-speed Internet connections, telephone and television.

The heart of nDanville — a tidy array of cables and flashing lights located in a long, narrow room at Galileo Magnet High School — doesn’t look especially impressive, but it does the job, according to Jason Grey, Danville Utilities’ broadband network manager.

Born in 2004 as a way to connect the utility’s substations Danville Utilities’ offices, it was soon apparent broadband had more uses.

City Manager Joe King said Danville Utilities initially invested $2.5 million in the project, but quickly decided there was potential to make a profit and repay that investment.

Soon nDanville repaid the investment, with interest, according to Grey. Since then it has been operating at a profit, and now brings in about $1.4 million each year — which is generally reinvested in expanding the system.

“It operates without any affect on taxpayers or rate-payers,” King said. “It survives on charges for services.”

Schools were a top priority, and do provide some income for Danville Utilities.

King said schools get federal funds to help pay for their telecommunications system, and nDanville has to bid to provide the system.

After schools, connecting city government buildings to the network became a priority, soon to be followed by taking the system out roads that have the most businesses and to the doors of industrial park tenants.

Danville’s medical community has been taking advantage of the system, connecting Danville Regional Medical Center, clinics and doctors’ offices so they can transfer information from patient files instantly.

“About 50 percent of clinics and doctors are hooked up now, with service through Gamewood (a Danville service provider),” Grey said.

The specially designed system, called nDanville Medical Network, was recently recognized for using technology to improve health in the community by The Intelligent Community Forum, a New York-based think tank that tracks how communities worldwide employ best practices in building a broadband economy.

Danville has made the group’s Smart 21 list two years in a row, and this year the nDanville Medical Network was one of two projects worldwide chosen for the group’s highest honor — the annual Founders Award.

The network has also been an important tool for attracting new businesses to Danville, King said, because businesses moving into industrial parks and the Tobacco Warehouse District have been able to easily connect to high-speed Internet services.

Recently, the Danville Regional Foundation announced it would move its offices into the former Dimon building on Bridge Street.

Karl Stauber, CEO of the foundation, said accessible broadband connectivity was a key element to that decision.

“Without the broadband infrastructure in the warehouse district, DRF would not be moving there,” Stauber said bluntly.

While nDanville provides connections within the city, Danville Utilities is a member of another network — Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative — that extends those connections beyond the city’s boundaries.

“They’re a much bigger network, connecting all of Southside Virginia between cities,” Grey said. “We operate only in our community.”

Next up for broadband expansion will be taking fiber-optic to residences, Grey said.