West Virginia Governor Jim Justice congratulated the service-disabled, veteran-owned company Alpha Technologies for crossing the finish line on a major fiber expansion project in the Kanawha Valley.
“I’ve said many times that broadband is monumental to our future in West Virginia,” Justice said Tuesday of the expansion, which was supported by his broadband initiatives.
“Projects like this one are absolute game changers and are absolutely necessary to push our state and our people forward.
“I commend Alpha Technologies in every way on the completion of their project and I encourage all our in-state technology companies to take advantage of the resources available to them to help us cover all of West Virginia in broadband,” he said.
The fiber infrastructure has been built to connect the Kanawha Valley area to a data center operated by Alpha Technologies. The project is designed to expand access to broadband for businesses across the region.
Doug Tate, Alpha Technologies CEO, said the governor's leadership had been key to the company's success in the matter.
“The Governor’s executive order eliminating right-of-way fees, legislative action on dig-once policies, low-interest loans from the West Virginia Economic Development Authority, and our ability to partner with WorkForce West Virginia has enabled us to double our workforce and connect more businesses with fiber and broadband infrastructure.”
For the past five years, Alpha has worked to install 35 miles of fiber optic cable, connecting a state-of-the-art, 80,000-square-foot data center designed to provide cloud computing and data center services to the business community of Charleston and South Charleston.
Typically, these are services that are only available in markets like Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbus, and Pittsburgh.