Mathews supervisors gave the go-ahead for the county’s broadband advisory board and Verizon to pursue grant funding for a $26 million-$28 million project that would bring high-speed internet to the entire county.

The Aug. 22 decision came after a presentation by Chris Debosier of Verizon, who spoke during the county board’s regular monthly meeting. Debosier reiterated to supervisors what he told the broadband advisory board a week earlier. He said that Verizon proposes to partner with the county on a grant from either the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative (VATI) or the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) that would convert the company’s central office in downtown Mathews to all fiber and extend 250 miles of new fiber from that hub to all unserved and underserved parts of the county. This would provide up to 2,000 homes with transmission speeds as high as 1,000 megabits per second for both download and upload, he said.

Both the federal and state pr...