June 23 – Haywood County did well when it came to securing funding to further expand broadband service to the furthest corners of its borders.
At the end of three years of state grants intended to expand internet access to rural areas, Haywood County has received just under $700,000 under the Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program.
These funds, and matching money from the county, will provide reliable access to high-speed internet to 915 Haywood businesses and homeowners who were previously unable to obtain it.
The NC Department of Information Technology’s Broadband and Digital Equity Division is awarding the grants for the CAB program.
The county has partnered with Skyrunner Internet to provide broadband service to homes and businesses across the county, from Soco Gap in Maggie to Clyde to the Haywood/Buncombe County line in the Crabtree/Fines Creek areas. Skyrunner will spend just under $600,000 of its own funds on the project. Including state and county funds, that brings the total cost of the Haywood broadband project to $2 million.
Once construction is complete, the program will have provided broadband access to 46% of the remaining unserved households and businesses in Haywood County, according to the agency’s map.
“The preliminary work that the county’s broadband committee did for the CAB grant has really paid off,” said David Francis, the county’s outgoing economic development director. “Out of all the applications, it was a bull’s eye that working with Skyrunner was the best option. Thank you to the district commissioners for their willingness to put in money to create an attractive application.”
There is still more work to do, he said. While the CAB grants represent a major step forward, they provide service to just under half of the areas in the province without access to high-speed internet.
However, another state program will intervene.
Francis said the county is awaiting guidance on another program that will provide funding for the “last 100 feet,” as opposed to the last mile that was the target of previous state programs.
These future funds will be supplemented by the $1 million in funding secured for the county by U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards.
Federal funds were critical
Statewide, $67 million was awarded to county partners under the CAB program. That amount will connect many rural households and businesses in 15 provinces to high-speed internet.
These projects will be funded with nearly $35 million from the federal American Rescue Plan, which is administered by the state. Funding for broadband expansion in North Carolina has been a three-way partnership, with nearly $16 million from counties and more than $16 million from select broadband providers joining federal funds.
The program allows counties to solicit proposals from pre-qualified internet providers and quickly issue awards. These providers must agree to provide high-speed service that reliably meets or exceeds 100 Mbps download and 100 Mbps upload speeds.
NCDIT has launched three new sites at ncbroadband.gov/dashboards that provide details and progress on programs funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The dashboards, updated monthly, show CAB program prices for each province in July.
For more information about NCDIT’s Division of Broadband and Digital Equity and Governor Cooper’s plan to close the digital divide, visit ncbroadband.gov.
