Stafford approves 140-foot tower, bolstering wireless broadband project

A new 140-foot tower will be used to provide internet service for 216 homes in the Marlborough Point section of Stafford County.

The Board of Supervisors approved the tower in a unanimous vote during its July 7 meeting.

“I’m so excited,” said Aquia District Supervisor Cindy Shelton. “This is the day we’ve been working for two years.”

The new tower will be located near the Aquia Landing county park and will sit on a 22-acre privately-owned property on Brooke Point Road. The tower will stand at least 400 feet away from the nearest home and will take about a month to build once construction permits are issued, said KGI spokeswoman Michele Wido.

The tower will beam high-speed internet service directly to wireless receivers installed on customers’ homes, providing up to 150 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload speeds, comparable to Comcast and Verizon.

KGI charges customers $150 per month for those speeds, of which it considers its premium tier of service. By comparison, Comcast charges $80 per month for a 100 Mbps download speed, while Verizon costs about $40 per month for 200 Mbps customers who live in a neighborhood serviced by Verizon.

Wireless internet customers never experience “throttling,” a practice of limiting the speeds of internet users based on the number of people in the neighborhood using cable or fiber services.

The area of Stafford County, where the new tower will be erected, at the confluence of the Potomac River and Aquia Creek, is an internet dead zone, long ignored by both cable and fiber companies like Comcast and Verizon, respectively.

That all changed last year when King George Wireless partnered with the county government to win a nearly $1 million grant from the state to install wireless internet service through the Widewater and Aquia areas in Stafford County, as well as an area along the Potomac River in King George County, to include Fairview Beach.

KGI is now in the process of running new underground fiber lines that will provide service to more than 80 customers along Aquia Creek Road, terminating at the Aquia Bay Marina. When complete, the entire project, including the new tower, will provide broadband internet access for up to 600 customers than did not have it before.

Many residents called KGI during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic to ask when the new service would be available.

“They want it to be built right now,” Wido told the Stafford Board of Supervisors.

The broadband project spanning both counties is slated to be completed by April 2021.

Broadband internet usage has increased by 47% since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.