Gov. Roy Cooper announced last Wednesday that 11 rural North Carolina counties — Chatham not among them — will receive more than $12 million in grants to expand high-speed internet service in those areas. Among the 11 counties, the winning applicants are expected to connect more than 8,000 families and 250 businesses, farms and community institutions to broadband service.
“With this pandemic, high-speed internet access is even more important for remote education, telemedicine and small businesses,” Cooper said during his announcement. “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.”
Even though Chatham wasn’t among the counties awarded funding, the governor’s annoucement emphasizes the continued need for expanded broadband access across the state, particularly with the expanded use of virtual meetings and learning due to the coronavirus. Graham, in adjoining Alamance County, was one of the 11 places awarded funding. Projects in 10 other counties were awarded grants: Bertie, Columbus, Duplin, Edgecombe, Greene, Martin, Nash, Roberson, Rockingham and Swain.
That particular funding — the 2019-20 Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) grant and COVID-19 Recovery Act funding — was awarded by the governor’s administration and the N.C. Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) and its Broadband Infrastructure Office (BIO). According to the governor’s website, applicants were scored based on the number of households, businesses and agricultural operations they propose to serve, the average cost to serve those households and the speeds offered.
“Too many North Carolinians lack access to the lifeline that high-speed internet connectivity offers,” acting NCDIT Secretary and State Chief Information Officer Thomas Parrish said at the governor’s announcement. “This divide is especially stark, currently, when residents are being asked to work, learn, access services and interact online more than ever. Because of the GREAT grants, thousands of households and hundreds of businesses in our state will finally have more options to connect, compete and thrive.”
Though Chatham County was not a recipient of a GREAT grant, Chatham County Schools has been working to distribute hotspot devices to students, devices which act as access points to connect users to the Internet through cellphone coverage providers. CCS Public Relations Coordinator John McCann told the News + Record that the district has secured funding to purchase additional hotspots. The county is also working to equip school buses with hotspots — to eventually be set up throughout the district, so families can connect to that Internet access point, McCann said. This option can potentially serve families for whom a personal hotspot is not helpful, in the case of areas without reliable cellphone coverage.
“We surveyed families and worked through our social workers to identify the need,” he said. “Hotspots are not the complete fix since they’re dependent on cellphone coverage. But we’ll be able to meet the needs of a good number of families for whom hotspots are viable.”
In January 2020, CCS joined the 1Million Project, a nationwide endeavor launched by Sprint in 2017 to provide students with hotspots, wireless access points that can connect user to the Internet. Originally intended for high school students, the project recently expanded its offerings to younger grades because of the impact of the coronavirus.
At this time, CCS families can request one hotspot per household, the district’s website says. The devices are completely free for students. Families may request a hotspot at bit.ly/CCSHotspotRequest2020.
At the beginning of the month, Emma Braaten, the CCS executive director of digital teaching and learning, told the News + Record that investment by the government (such as that announced by Cooper last week) to ensure internet acess for every individual must happen to truly address the problem.
“Hotspots are just a Band-Aid — it’s just a quick fix for us right now,” she said at the time. “It’s not actually going to be a long term solution for us. It’s really an uphill climb right now ... But we’re trying to put our heads together, put the funding out there. So we’ll be able to provide some type of solution for some of our students and keep working to make up the difference in other places.”
According to BroadbandNow.com, which measures internet connections and speeds across the country, 86.5% of Chatham residents have access to internet download speeds of 25 megabits per second, which is considered high-speed internet. Nearly 80% of the county (78.8%) has access to internet download speeds of 100 megabits per second, which is typically considered as more reliable high-speed internet for multiple devices streaming video services, such as Netflix or Zoom.
In comparison, in neighboring Wake County, 99.9% of residents have that kind of access, with 94.3% in Orange County and 95.5% in Lee County. In the state overall, 93.8% of North Carolinians have access in 100 megabits per second speeds or faster.
You can learn more about broadband access in Chatham in this April story by the News + Record: www.chathamnewsrecord.com/stories/chatham-nc-broadband-issues-covid-19-coronavirus,5170
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com.