By Jared Putnam
Staff Writer
Nearly $30 million has been set aside to improve high-speed internet access in rural North Carolina and Clay County is getting a slice of the funding pie.
A total of $29.8 million is being awarded to 11 providers and cooperatives for projects in 18 counties, including Clay County and Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation. The objective is to connect 15,965 households and 703 businesses in rural North Carolina to high-speed internet.
“It is a goal of our board to aggressively focus in the coming years on infrastructure expansion and improvements,” said Rob Peck, chairman of the Clay County Board of Commissioners. “Prioritizing finances allows us to continue to move the county forward with regard to items such as broadband.”
A number of details about the funding are still unknown, including the specific amount of money that Clay County will receive. Applicants receive higher awards for agreeing to provide higher speed service, defined as a minimum of 25 Megabits per second download and 3 Mbps upload.
In a press release announcing the funding, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said the COVID-19 pandemic is “shining a light on the need for better high-speed internet access” in the state’s rural communities.
“The need for broadband/high-speed internet has grown exponentially over the years, but the need and demand has skyrocketed because of the pandemic,” said Kelly Crawford, director of media and communications for BRMEMC. “In March 2020, early on in the pandemic, BRMEMC recognized this need and designated free Wi-Fi hotspots throughout our service territory for members and their families to use. We also saw tremendous growth in people moving to the area and this affected the demand for broadband as well.”
Clay County Manager Debbie Mauney is part of the county’s broadband committee, which was established by the board of commissioners three years ago and began meeting again in December following an extended layoff due to the pandemic. That meeting included representatives from Windstream — which also provides high-speed internet service to Clay County — and included discussions about using community centers to host sessions designed to help inform the public about existing internet services.
Both Windstream and BRMEMC introduced gig-speed service — sometimes called “ultra-high-speed internet” — within certain areas of the county late last year. However, much of Clay County’s focus remains on expanding to areas where residents do not already have some type of hi-speed service available.
“It’s so expensive to run it in these rural areas, this is why we all have to come together and try to pull in as much money as we can for this expansion,” Mauney said.
According to Crawford, North Carolina has provided a two-year time frame for construction to be completed.
“We are working with our local and regional partners to meet our objectives, though, we realize this is a process that won’t happen overnight,” Peck said. “We are committed to improving access to and expansion of these necessary utilities.”
The grants are part of the 2020 Special Supplementary Round of the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology Grant program and will be distributed through the N.C. Department of Information Technology Broadband Infrastructure Office.
The GREAT program provides matching grants to internet service providers and electric membership cooperatives that compete for funding to expand high-speed internet service. For this special supplementary round, projects in Tier 1, Tier 2 and rural census tracts of Tier 3 counties were eligible.
All awards are contingent on final executed grant agreements with broadband provider partners.