The Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (MBC) is expanding its open-access advanced fiber optic network, as a result of three Federal Broadband Stimulus grant awards.

A $16 million grant award MBC received in February, 2010, with $4 million in matching funds provided by the Virginia Tobacco Commission, will enable MBC to grow its existing middle mile infrastructure to provide fiber connectivity to over 100 K-12 schools in Southern Virginia. MBC is building over 400 miles of new fiber routes, bringing approximately 75 new jobs to the region to include 25 jobs in Halifax County. This grant also provides additional access points within the unserved and underserved region for MBC Members to provide affordable retail telecom service to the school systems and to extend last-mile services to residential and business customers.

Unless we lose power tomorrow, we're going to launch the beta version of SoVaLife's community area this weekend so you can share photos and videos of the snow with other visitors; if the storm lives up to the forecast, it will probably be one of the biggest (if not the biggest) snowfalls that any of us have ever seen around here so we we decided to launch the community feature before we had planned to.  If we lose power, the launch will have to wait since we won't be able to work on the site; check back in tomorrow, and share your pix - but please be forgiving if there are any glitches since we haven't done much testing yet.

And by the way - you'll be able to login to the site using your Facebook id if you'd prefer, so you don't have to remember one more username/password combo!

We checked in at Riverdale this afternoon to see how much more the flood waters had risen, and took a few more photos to share.

Click a thumbnail to open the larger view.

As of 10:30 this morning, the Dan River was still rising, had flooded Riverdale, and was expected to continue to rise until late this evening.  According to the National Weather Service, the river was at 25.6 feet at 8am today and is forecast to crest near 26.8 feet; flood stage is 19 feet.

These photos were taken at 10:30 am;  I ran into Bunny Propst, owner of Riverdale Auto Sales, as she was there monitoring the flood's encroachment on her business.  Bunny had just heard an update that the waters might rise only 6 more inches, and is keeping her fingers crossed that's correct.   The sheds below are on the back of her property, and the water was also rising from the other side of the road.  Click the thumbnails for larger images.