The Digital Vein: How Fiber Rollouts Fuel the Critical Minerals Boom

RADFORD, VA – December 04, 2025 – Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) recently announced the launch of its 100% fiber-to-the-home internet service in this small Virginia city, promising residents and businesses symmetrical, multi-gigabit speeds. On the surface, it’s a familiar story of digital upgrades playing out in towns across America. A long-term cable provider is investing in a superior network, construction is underway, and local officials, like Radford Mayor David Horton, are rightfully praising the move as providing "the best technology for our residents and businesses alike."

This development, part of Shentel's aggressive "Glo Fiber" expansion into underserved regional markets, is undeniably a crucial step forward for Radford. It intensifies local competition, offers consumers superior choice against incumbents, and equips the community with the digital tools necessary for modern economic participation. However, viewed through the lens of the global energy and technology transition, this local infrastructure project represents something far more significant. It is a single, tangible example of a nationwide build-out that carries a massive, and often overlooked, demand for the very critical minerals that form the bedrock of our future economy. Each mile of fiber laid and each network switch activated tightens the link between our digital aspirations and our physical resource supply chains.

A New Digital Standard

The technological leap from traditional cable to Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) is not merely incremental; it is transformative. Shentel's promise of speeds up to 5 Gbps with symmetrical performance—meaning upload speeds match download speeds—is a direct response to the evolving demands of the digital age. While legacy cable systems were engineered for a world of passive consumption, fiber networks are built for an era of active participation: seamless video conferencing for remote work, real-time data uploads to the cloud, and the operation of countless connected devices that define the Internet of Things (IoT).

Shentel’s strategic focus on “tier 3 and 4 markets,” often bypassing hyper-competitive urban cores for towns like Radford, is part of a calculated national trend. These communities, once at risk of being left on the wrong side of the digital divide, are becoming the new frontier for infrastructure investment. By deploying a technologically superior product, Shentel aims to capture market share and establish a long-term competitive advantage. The upgrade is offered at no additional cost to existing customers, a tactic designed to accelerate adoption and quickly realize returns on the significant capital expenditure, which for Shentel totaled over $81 million for fiber expansion in the first half of 2025 alone. This investment doesn't just challenge local competitors; it fundamentally redefines the baseline for essential infrastructure in the region, future-proofing the community for decades to come.

Unearthing the Material Cost of Connectivity

While the fiber optic cables themselves are made primarily of abundant silica, the vast ecosystem required to make them function is a complex assembly of critical minerals and rare earth elements. The rollout in Radford is a microcosm of this material-intensive reality. The network doesn't end at the glass strands; it includes a sprawling array of active electronic components, each with its own demanding mineral bill of materials.

Every switch, router, and optical amplifier that powers Shentel’s over 18,000-mile regional network relies on high-performance semiconductors. These chips require ultra-pure silicon wafers, but also an array of other elements like gallium and indium for specialized applications. The lasers that transmit data pulses through the fiber often use elements like germanium, while the optical amplifiers that boost the signal over long distances can contain rare earths such as erbium. Furthermore, the data centers that form the backbone of the internet, and the local network hubs that support the Radford deployment, are vast consumers of copper for wiring and power distribution. The uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) that ensure network reliability during outages depend on batteries, increasingly lithium-ion, which in turn require lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

When we multiply the material requirements of a single community network by the thousands of similar projects happening nationwide—many subsidized by government grants aimed at closing the digital divide—the cumulative demand for these minerals becomes staggering. The digital transition is, in effect, a mineral transition. The insatiable global appetite for faster, more reliable connectivity directly fuels demand in the mining sector, creating a powerful, symbiotic relationship between the tech industry and resource extraction.

The Digitally Enabled Mine

This relationship is not a one-way street. The high-speed, low-latency connectivity being deployed by companies like Shentel is the very same technology that is revolutionizing the mining industry itself. Modern mining operations are rapidly transforming into high-tech industrial sites that are heavily reliant on robust digital infrastructure to enhance efficiency, safety, and environmental stewardship.

In the pursuit of copper, lithium, and rare earths, mining companies are deploying autonomous haul trucks and drills that navigate via GPS and LiDAR, all coordinated through a central command center that can be located hundreds of miles away. This requires uninterrupted, high-bandwidth wireless and fiber networks on site. Fleets of drones perform geological surveys and monitor tailings dams, streaming terabytes of data for real-time analysis. Thousands of IoT sensors are embedded in equipment to predict maintenance needs, monitor air and water quality, and track personnel in underground tunnels, preventing accidents before they happen.

These “smart mining” innovations are critical for meeting the world’s soaring mineral demand in a more sustainable and cost-effective manner. They allow companies to extract resources from more challenging deposits with greater precision and a smaller environmental footprint. However, none of it is possible without the foundational layer of digital connectivity that fiber rollouts provide. In a fascinating feedback loop, the infrastructure built from critical minerals is enabling the more efficient and responsible extraction of those same minerals, creating a cycle of technologically-driven supply and demand. The fiber being laid in Radford today is part of the same technological wave that allows a mining engineer in a city to operate a vehicle in a remote desert pit tomorrow, all in the service of securing the resources needed for our shared digital future.