FAIRLAWN -- The first of several funding applications aimed at creating a New River Valley broadband telecommunications system will go out next week.

It's the latest step in a long-running effort to improve broadband Internet connections in the region.

The New River Valley Planning District Commission Telecommunications Committee went over its application Friday for a $400,000 Appalachian Regional Commission grant toward the first of three phases for the project. The application deadline is the middle of next week.

Next month, the group will apply for a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant.

Another $601,000 could come through the Virginia's First Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, and about $525,000 from private investors.

"We really need to have all this in place by Dec. 1," said Dave Rundgren, the commission's executive director.

More than 74,000 shares in the project will be sold to localities in the Virginia's First authority that want to join a participation committee, similar to one established for a large industrial park near Dublin. Such projects were made possible by legislation allowing multiple localities to invest in and derive revenue from economic development projects.

Leasing some of the broadband fiber to other companies is one way the system will provide revenue, said Keith Holt, a commission staff member working on the project. "So there are definitely revenue possibilities there."

The first phase would see 36 miles of broadband fiber from the Wythe County line through Pulaski County, including the towns of Pulaski and Dublin, to Christiansburg at the intersection of Virginia 114 and U.S. 460.

It would connect public schools, governmental administrative facilities, industrial parks, schools, New River Community College, the western campus of Radford University and the New River Valley Regional Jail. It would also be the start of a governmental network and provide access to businesses along the route.

Education will be an important component of the first phase, Holt told the committee.

"This has near-endless possibilities," Holt said. "The state of the educational system has changed radically since most of us in this room have gone through it." But it needs a telecommunications network that can process a lot of data to be effective, he said.

Local Internet service providers will be able to use the network to increase their customers and services.

Some broadband fiber already exists in that corridor, from both commercial and governmental sources.

"We're not ignoring that fact. We want to take advantage of that existing fiber," Holt said.

This first phase is part of a planned 283-mile fiber network, with the second phase connecting Dublin to Pearisburg and Pembroke, and the third connecting Newport to the Virginia 114/U.S. 460 intersection in Montgomery County.

Rundgren said the justification for governmental investment in such a system is to help create an infrastructure to help businesses do business.

"This is like the interstate highway. It's not like your driveway," he said.