The Yorktown-based telecommunications company has been seeking approvals from Hampton and Fort Monroe in recent months to expand its network throughout the lower portions of the Peninsula.
The company has not yet approached the state with its plans, a Virginia Marine Resources Commission spokesperson said Thursday.
Existing carriers are located in the connecting bridges and tunnels, leaving them susceptible to damage in the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, according to the company's pitch to the Hampton City Council. Metro Fiber's plan bypasses those infrastructure points.
The Hampton council agreed in September to grant Metro Fiber a five-year franchise agreement to use public streets, conduits and other infrastructure to install the company's telecommunications system.
The company is still finalizing plans with Hampton and the Fort Monroe Authority. It will also need an approval from VMRC and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before any work is done traversing the shipping channel.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources will also have a say in any work done on Fort Monroe.
Metro Fiber has submitted a first draft of its dig permit to the Fort Monroe Authority, although the company is now revising it, authority executive director Glenn Oder told the board of directors Thursday.
VMRC has not received an application or request for comments regarding an underwater crossing by Metro Fiber or any other company, VMRC spokeswoman Laurie Naismith said.
Metro Fiber is a part of Cable Associates Inc., which has built underground conduit in areas including Richmond, North Carolina, Franklin County and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The company also created private fiber networks for Newport News Public Schools, the Newport News Information Technology Department and the Department of Defense.
Cable Associates has also placed underwater conduit beneath the Pamunkey, Mattaponi and York rivers for Cox Communications, according to the company's website. Fiber was then run through each underwater conduit to provide a fiber ring connecting Virginia Beach to West Point, in King William County.
In those cases Cable Associates received federal and state approval for the projects.
In September, Metro Fiber president Gary Tarpley told the City Council the cable will travel from Fort Monroe, to Mercury Boulevard, along LaSalle Avenue, then Tidemill Lane and "past NASA into York County."
Tarpley did not return messages seeking comment on Wednesday and Thursday.
"It's their intent to connect all of Tidewater," the company's lawyer, Allen Tanner told the City Council in September.
©2015 the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
