RALEIGH – North Carolina is pouring $12 million into grants to expand high-speed internet in 11 rural counties.

The goal: to help students learning remotely in the age of the coronavirus pandemic.

Governor Roy Cooper, along with the NC Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) and its Broadband Infrastructure Office (BIO), announced today the award of the 2019-2020 Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) grant and COVID-19 Recovery Act funding.

The winning projects are expected to connect 8,017 families and 254 businesses, farms and community institutions to high-speed internet.

“With this pandemic, high-speed internet access is even more important for remote education, telemedicine and small businesses,” Gov. Cooper said in a statement. “These projects will help bridge the digital divide in 11 rural counties, so these communities can access important services and participate in our increasingly digital society and economy.”

Despite the fact that around 94.8 percent of North Carolinians have access to high-speed internet, only 59.4 percent of households adopt it, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The coronavirus pandemic has also served to exacerbate the “digital divide” — the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the Internet, and those who do not.

The announcement comes during Rural Broadband Week, which Gov. Cooper declared to encourage efforts to get more rural North Carolina communities connected to high-speed internet.

The GREAT grant program provides matching grants to internet service providers and electric membership cooperatives that compete for funding to expand high-speed internet service in Tier 1 counties.

In 2018, the NC General Assembly approved the first funding for the GREAT Grant program — around $10 million. Then another $15 million was included in one of the budget bills in 2019, recurring for 10 years. The state also received $9 million from the CARES Act to expand the grants program.

In this round, providers and cooperatives were awarded $10,244,195 for projects in the following 11 counties, connecting 6,860 households and 243 businesses, agricultural operations and community anchor institutions to broadband.

GREAT grant recipients include:

  • Bertie — Roanoke Connect Holdings
  • Columbus — Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation
  • Duplin — CenturyLink
  • Edgecombe — CloudWyze, Inc.
  • Graham — Zito Media
  • Greene — Nfinity Link Communications Inc.
  • Martin — CloudWyze, Inc.
  • Nash — CloudWyze, Inc.
  • Robeson — Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation
  • Rockingham — Spectrum Southeast, LLC
  • Swain — Sky Wave, Inc.

An additional award of $2 million from COVID-19 Recovery Act funding will enable broadband deployments in a second area of Robeson County, connecting 1,157 households and 11 businesses, agricultural operations and community anchor institutions to broadband.

County — Applicant/Provider

Robeson — Spectrum Southeast, LLC

Six more last-mile broadband projects, located in Columbus, Duplin, Graham and Swain Counties, are under consideration for COVID-19 Recovery Act funding.

Launched in 2018, the GREAT grant program previously awarded nearly $10 million for 20 projects in 18 Tier 1 counties to connect more than 10,000 households, businesses and agricultural operations.

The program will expand to include Tier 2 counties in the upcoming grant cycle.