(The Center Square) — Nearly 85,000 North Carolina households and more than 2,400 businesses in 69 counties will receive improved internet access through $206 million in grants announced by Gov. Roy Cooper this week.
The $206 million in Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology grants are in addition to $23.4 million awarded in July and $30.8 awarded on Aug. 1, bringing the total to over $260 million in GREAT grants awarded out of $350 million available.
“High-speed internet access is critical for people to work, learn, access telehealth and connect with one another,” Cooper said on Wednesday. “Thanks to this significant GREAT grant award funding, many more North Carolina families and small business owners will have the tools they need to succeed in today’s digital world.”
The GREAT grant eligibility requirements stipulate service provider applicants must participate in the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides eligible low-income households a $30 per month discount on high-speed internet service or access to a comparable low-cost program.
The grant applications are processed by the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Broadband Infrastructure Office, under the Division of Broadband and Digital Equity.
NCDIT received 305 applications for the current round of GREAT grants, with proposals to serve more than 487,000 homes and businesses. Officials scored applications based on the proposed number of households and businesses served, average cost to serve the locations, and internet speeds offered, according to a Cooper statement.
Winning applicants must provide a minimum of 100 megabits per second download speed and 20 megabits per second upload speed, with the ability to scale upload speeds to 100 megabits per second by the end of 2026.
“We are excited to be awarding this unprecedented amount of funding to bring high-speed internet access to such a large number of residents and businesses across the state,” NCDIT Secretary Jim Weaver said. “These funds will go a long way in closing the digital divide by bringing equitable access to both rural and urban communities.”
Service providers awarded GREAT grants include Lumos, Connect Holding, Focus Broadband, Frontier, Blue Ridge Mountain EMC, Cloudwyze, Zitel LLC, AT&T North Carolina, Spectrum, Optimum, InfinityLink, and the French Broad Electric Membership Corp.
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at The John Locke Foundation, noted that the General Assembly created the GREAT grant program in 2018 to incentivize broadband expansion to unserved areas in economically distressed counties, though many counties that received grants on Wednesday are not economically distressed.
“The GREAT grant program is intended for unserved and remote rural areas in the poorest counties. They could, however, go to less-developed locations within wealthier counties. The success of the grants, as measured by expanding broadband access to unserved areas, hinges on how true approvals stay to the grant’s foundational purpose,” Sanders said.
Of the 69 counties covered in the latest round of GREAT grants, 32 are among the state’s most economically distressed, 26 are in the middle of the pack, and 11 are among the most well-off counties, according to North Carolina Commerce Department’s 2022 tier designations.
In 2021, the FCC awarded over $166 million to nine different companies to expand broadband access to 155,137 different underserved locations across North Carolina. With more than a half-billion dollars in spending on the internet in the last two years, “waste and fraud are definitely concerns” as well, Sanders said.
“These programs represent massive government expenditures in recognition — especially in light of COVID-era school lockdowns, working from home, and telehealth — that access to high speed broadband has taken on even greater importance, and the rural/urban divide here is acute,” he said.
