Tired of seeing spinning wheels on buffering videos and websites that load at a glacial pace? So is Newport News. That’s why the city is investing in infrastructure to get more people connected to high-speed internet.
The city announced last week it plans to kickstart its Digital Infrastructure Expansion Initiative using a $2 million federal investment. The money will be used to lay high-speed fiber network cables from Newport News and Hampton, through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel and connect to existing fiber networks in South Hampton Roads.
Digital infrastructure is in demand as residents, businesses and localities are consuming more data in recent years, according to Newport News Innovation Program Manager Marlin McDaniel. He said 30% of Newport News residents don’t have high-speed internet access and the city is in need of system updates to ensure residents and businesses can stay connected.
“That limits how much data can be downloaded in a home, in a business or sent out to other places where data is going to need to go, so that’s really the big gap that we’re trying to address,” McDaniel said. “And we’ve seen communities successfully address this gap.”
Residents without fiber access currently top out at one gigabit download speeds, according to McDaniel, with people “usually” experiencing slower service than that. With the fiber upgrades, he said they can expect to experience 10 gigabits per second.
The $2 million in federal funding was included in the 2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act as Community Project Funding sponsored by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott.
Extending the Peninsula’s fiber network across the two bridges would cost roughly $1.5 million each, said McDaniel, meaning the funds would only cover phases of the larger project. The city is currently conducting needs assessments to understand how much new infrastructure is required, which will be ready by the end of the year.
Fiber networks are one aspect of Newport News’ digital infrastructure that were mentioned alongside data centers at a recent town hall discussion. But McDaniel said the investment is not specifically meant to attract data centers to the city.
“Could data centers, in theory if they were here, which is not in the cards, use it? Yeah. Trucks can use our roads,” McDaniel said. “That’s something they could ultimately use, but we don’t have any sort of data center conversations or investments happening right now.”
The Peninsula has lagged behind South Hampton Roads cities in upgrading its connectivity. The Southside Network Authority has spent the last few years building out a more than 100-mile fiber cable ring across Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Virginia Beach. The five cities banded together to form the authority to oversee the project and share ownership.
According to Southside Network Authority Executive Director Marcellus Nixon, the goal of that project is to build a technological highway across the region so internet service providers can come and plug in to local communities.
“We’re building I-64,” Nixon said. “We’re basically building the most expensive portion, which is the backbone.”
File photo of cables being placed underground along General Booth Boulevard near South Birdneck Road in 2017. Peninsula residents without fiber access currently top out at one gigabit download speeds, with people “usually” experiencing slower service than that. With the fiber upgrades, they can expect to experience 10 gigabits per second. (Staff/File)
Newport News’ project is not directly a part of that regional plan, Nixon said, although the authority is acting as a consultant for Hampton and Newport News to help best appropriate funding as it comes in.
Nixon said his goal is to have Peninsula localities coordinate with the authority to build out its own fiber ring that matches the South Hampton Roads counterpart and can link residents in any part of the region to high-speed internet.
“Our goal is to build fiber in the entire Hampton Roads area that will allow any municipality, including Poquoson, Yorktown, Williamsburg and James City County to connect to Chesapeake and Suffolk, so it’s all connected,” Nixon said.
Devlin Epding, 757-510-4037, devlin.epding@virginiamedia.com