North Carolina has spent $675 million in recent years to expand broadband internet across the state. But the state now has more than double that amount in federal funding available to connect people who still don’t have access to high speeds, ramping up the effort to get universal high-speed coverage across the state.
State and federal funding has been slowly chipping away at the need for years. The latest set of grants awarded in June have been through a program called Completing Access to Broadband, or CAB. That means the state has been able to get high-speed internet to 250,000 homes and businesses.
One of those grants led to a recent installation effort on a quiet two-lane road a few miles outside Louisburg. Crews for the internet provider Brightspeed spent the day hanging fiberoptic cables from telephone poles, then running the cables into underground pipes where they’ll connect directly into homes.
Once the homes are connected, residents will see a night-and-day difference in their internet speeds.
"It's got to be exciting for homeowners out here that have probably been on DSL, getting very, very slow speeds," said Steve Brewer, director of state government affairs at Brightspeed. "Most homeowners don't need two gigs, but they'll be able to get two gigs."
That’s more than 20 times the speed of a typical DSL connection. Broadband internet connections have been hard to get in rural communities, because it’s expensive to run fiber lines to sparsely populated neighborhoods like this one in Franklin County, where the street only has three houses.
Companies like Brightspeed receive the grants to offset the costs of expanding their networks, and they’re required to provide matching funds. Brightspeed vice president Pamela Sherwood says the grants have helped Brightspeed serve 100,000 people who otherwise wouldn’t have high-speed service. The Charlotte-based company has been the largest recipient of state grants so far.
"A lot of our service area is very rural, so we don't have a whole lot of density across our network, which is what makes a fiber build really expensive," she said. "The grants allow us to leverage additional funding to reach further and deeper into our network to connect those customers."
The state’s Department of Information Technology recently paused the CAB program with about $60 million left to spend. That’s because the agency is up against tight deadlines for a newer federal program that’s directing $1.5 billion dollars for broadband in North Carolina.
The new program is called Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD. Angie Taylor is director of the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Office.
"This summer, we're focused totally on the BEAD program and getting those tentative awards made and submitted to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by Sept. 4," Taylor said.
BEAD will differ from the state’s previous two grant programs because it’s not limited to fiber broadband connections.
"A guidance came out last month that requires the states to have more of a technology-neutral approach," Taylor said. "So we will be accepting applications from fiber providers, fixed wireless and low-Earth orbit satellites."
That change was initiated by the Trump administration, and it could allow former Trump adviser Elon Musk’s satellite-based Starlink service to get a share of the grant funding.
Satellite internet services like Starlink can reach remote areas where fiber broadband might not be feasible, but they can be more expensive and come with slower speeds.
Taylor says the BEAD funding could finally get North Carolina serving all remaining homes and businesses.
"I think the combination of technologies is what helps us get to serving all," she said. "There's a 100% universal service coverage goal under BEAD, and so the idea is that using all the technologies available is what will help us get to that."
Up until now, most of the state’s broadband funding has gone to fiber providers like Brightspeed and Spectrum, as well as local phone cooperatives that offer internet service. They say the fiber lines are best equipped to handle future increases in internet speeds as technology improves.
It can be a slow process: the providers have two years under the grants to get service installed, and it can take time to get permits and permissions to install equipment on power poles.
"The actual work — the construction aspect of it — is just a mere fraction," Brewer said.
North Carolina's rural broadband expansion efforts began in 2019 after the state legislature approved the first grant program. Funding was later expanded with money from the federal American Rescue Plan in 2021, but the initial state-level funding allowed North Carolina to move faster than other states.
State broadband officials say they'll take stock of any remaining coverage gaps once the BEAD funding is spent. The goal is to serve another 100,000 homes and businesses with the new program.
