My home is not on any broadband grant list, now what?

This question has come up for many when they realize that construction of new fiber broadband may not reach their location. Are there any solutions and will more help or grants be coming in the future?

Seems like a good time to talk about alternative solutions for homeowners and what the future holds for broadband grants. There are also services available for business owners, but I will save that topic for a future article.

Internet services available now for homeowners (residential subscribers) vary depending on your location. Assuming you are not in an area that is currently serviced by Optimum, one of the Highlands service providers, Balsam West, or will be serviced in the future through a previously awarded grant program, your options are limited to either a satellite provider or one of the wireless services.

Satellite and Wireless Internet

The best satellite service on the list is StarLink. I say “best” because StarLink offers the fastest speeds, lowest latency, and the fewest weather disruptions of any satellite provider, all with no data caps. Starlink has now been around about four years, and many residents in Macon County without access to other Internet services are connected to it, including me. StarLink is a great solution if you do not have access to faster hard line services, you have enough clear sky view for the satellite signal reception, and you can afford the entry cost. Unfortunately, StarLink availability in our area is closed at the moment. Part of this is due to Helene, but there are simply too many StarLink customers in our area and not enough satellites and ground stations to service them. Hopefully this situation will change in the future as more folks impacted by Helene get back on cable or fiber, and as SpaceX is able to put more satellites and ground stations in service.

The other two satellite providers are Hughesnet and Viasat. There are many mixed reviews about these services which range from poor performance, frequent outages, data caps, etc. But these services do work well for many folks and are still an option if there are no others.

If you wish to learn more about the various satellite internet services in detail, PC Magazine recently published a very comprehensive article available here.
https://www.pcmag.com/comparisons/starlink-vs-hughesnet-vs-viasat-which-satellite-internet-provider-is-best

Beyond satellite, there are a number of wireless Internet providers, depending on where you are located. If you have good signal from a cell tower, you may be able to get fixed wireless service from Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T. In our area this is mainly limited to the major highway corridors and in Franklin. There are also a few pockets of wireless Internet service available from companies like Sky Runner and BalsamWest. Unfortunately, the coverage by these providers is pretty limited to specific communities.

Future Broadband Grants

For those who want or need a fiber connection to their home and are not in an area that will be impacted by any of the already awarded grant programs, there are new grant programs on the horizon. Though this can provide some hope, the future of these programs is uncertain at the moment.

During the previous administration, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was passed into law, and $42.5 billion from this bill was allocated for rural broadband expansion. These funds were placed under jurisdiction of the federal agency NTIA for distribution through a program called BEAD. Under the current BEAD rules defined by the NTIA, the funds are to be divided up amongst the states and administered by state broadband programs. The state of North Carolina is designated to receive $1.53 billion, which will be used to fund future rounds of the existing GREAT and CAB grant programs.

Unfortunately, current political and economic uncertainty is having a ripple effect on all government agencies and business sectors. The new administration is changing leadership at the NTIA, the FCC, and other agencies, and as with many agencies within the federal government grant programs are on hold. It is unclear what changes will be made to the NTIA BEAD program or if any of these funds will still be made available to the states after program changes are complete.

Broadband organizations, providers industry-wide, and state broadband offices are all waiting to see what happens next. Of course rumors and speculation vary widely from all funds being reclaimed by the fed to only minor rule changes, but no one knows what the final outcome will be. Until NTIA reorganization (leadership changes and head count reductions) and BEAD funding decisions are complete, future broadband grant programs funded through BEAD are on hold. If you feel these funds should be spent as legislated by Congress for rural broadband expansion, now would be a good time to communicate this desire to your senators and representatives.

Broadband Update for Macon County
April 2025

Jeff Lee, LitteT Broadband

January 2024 was a long time ago. Much has happened since my last post and though I have not made updates to this news blog for a while, I have been working to respond to folks asking questions about their specific areas. Here is an update to the broadband related happenings in Macon over the past year.

Frontier GREAT Grant

Many of you will recall that Frontier was awarded a grant to serve 2700 locations throughout the County by the State of North Carolina. Frontier completed all engineering and planning work and their contractor has been busy deploying fiber county-wide. If you have ventured down the GA Road, you may have seen their material and equipment staging area just south of Coweeta Church Rd. We continually receive reports of fiber construction activity as they complete what Frontier refers to as the “feeder” fiber - the fiber that connects communities with the central wire centers or hubs. As these “feeder” fiber sections are completed, Frontier will be working to connect homes and business. If Frontier connects your home or busiess, please let us know. Though the project was scheduled to be completed next Month, delays due to Helene recovery and other factors prompted Frontier to request an extension from the state. We are hopeful that much of this project will be completed by the end of 2025.

BalsamWest GREAT Grant

This grant award was received by BalsamWest for extension of fiber service to 200+ locations in the Otto, Scaly Mountain, and unincorporated Highlands areas. BalsamWest has completed all planning and engineering and has all materials staged, but the deployment has been delayed by permitting with Haywood EMC and the USFS. Some of permitting delays also stem from Helene recovery and staffing reductions at USFS are now contributing to delays nation-wide. Like Frontier, BalsamWest has requested an extension from the state and we are hopeful that construction work will begin soon.

Frontier CAB Grant

Some of you may have seen the news back in March of this year that Frontier was awarded and additional grant through the North Carolina CAB grant program. This new grant will allow Frontier fiber service extension to 411 locations in the Sanderstown area of Macon County. The CAB grant will be synergistic with fiber deployment already underway nearby from the earlier GREAT grant. This new project is expected to complete by the end of 2026.

Charter RDOF Subsidy

Charter Communications (doing business as Time Warner Cable of North Carolina) won the FCC RDOF auction for all eligible census blocks in Macon County. They began deploying fiber in other parts of the state in 2022, and some of you may have noticed signs here and there in the area that say "Charter Spectrum Coming Soon". Though they have been working in Haywood and Jackson counties, we have yet to see any activity by Charter or their contractors in Macon. Assuming plans do not change Charter has until 2028 to complete the project under the current FCC rules, though it is unclear how rising costs and uncertainty in the economy and at the FCC will affect their project in Macon. If you see any fiber construction by Charter in your area, please let us know.

Nantahala Lake Public WiFi

The project to extend fiber to 5 County facilities and offer public WiFi in the Nantahala Lake community was completed in mid 2024. Public WiFi is now available at the following locations:

  • Nantahala Fontana Library Branch and Community Center
  • Nantahala Volunteer Fire & Rescue main station
  • Nantahala Volunteer Fire & Rescue substation (near Nantahala School)
  • Nantahala EMS
  • Nantahala Recreation Center

Cowee School Public WiFi

This is a new project that is just getting started. As part of the Frontier GREAT grant program, Cowee School will be connected to fiber within the next few months. We are currently working with Cowee School Arts & Heritage organization to upgrade the network infrastructure within the school so that public WiFi service can be offered to the community when the fiber arrives.

How Much Will It Cost to Connect?

Jeff Lee, LitteT Broadband

I recently saw a Rant&Rave in the Franklin Press talking about the cost of broadband connection fees.
 
"It is good broadband is getting extended to under-served areas of the county, but the connection fee of $1,500 is a barrier for most households.”
 

Seeing this prompted me to write this article in hopes of clarifying a few facts about the broadband expansion projects under way in our county. The real answer to the question in the title is "It Depends".

There are two types of broadband expansion projects: projects privately funded by individual providers and projects funded by state grants and federal subsidies.

Privately Funded Projects

The South Macon and Nantahala broadband expansion projects are examples of projects kicked off through some action and by Macon County, but must ultimately be financed through private funding. 

In the case of South Macon, the County provided a grant (back when it was still legal for counties to do so) to help kickstart the construction of a fiber backbone into the South Macon area. Without the existence of that backbone, no expansion was even possible. Ultimately however, the financial burden to connect homes and businesses to this backbone fall on BalsamWest. BalsamWest is actively working with communities, businesses, and individual residents to get connected. Unfortunately the cost to reach many of these communities from the backbone is high, and these communities and residents are being asked to defray some of the investment cost through a connection fee. The actual connection fee charged typically depends on how many homes/businesses are being connected within a given area.

The Nantahala expansion project is just getting underway. As counties in NC are no longer legally allowed to offer grants to encourage broadband construction, the County contracted BalsamWest to build fiber and connect 5 County anchor institution facilities. These facilities vitally need the connectivity for public safety, and once the fiber is complete will offer public wifi to help provide some community connectivity. To expand into the community beyond these specific 5 connections requires private funding from BalsamWest. After completion of the project initiated by the County, BalsamWest will begin to work with surrounding communities to provide fiber service. Some of these communities and individual residents will likely be asked to pay a connection fee to defray additional construction costs.

There are other expansion projects within Macon that were not initiated by the County but by individual providers. Projects developed by individual providers on their own are typically chosen and designed to meet some basic business return on investment criteria. Internet service providers are businesses that must generate a profit to remain in business. The connection fee amounts charged in projects such as these will depend on the provider, how they have chosen to fund the project, and how they intend to make a return on this ivestment.

Grant and Subsidy Funded Projects

There are currently 3 grant and subsidy funded broadband projects that will be impacting Macon County. With several additional grant programs kicking off, we hope to add more projects like these in Macon.

  • GREAT Frontier Award - Frontier is finishing up their design work and plans to begin construction in the next month or so. This project will connect 2700 homes and businesses by Q2 2025.
  • GREAT BalsamWest Award - BalsamWest is working on planning and design and intends to begin construction by the end of the summer. This build will serve 263 residences in the South Macon area by Q3 2025. Macon County was pleased to see this grant awarded as it leverages earlier investment in the South Macon project.
  • RDOF Charter Award - Charter Communications received subsidy awards nation-wide as part of this program. They are busy building in Haywood and Jackson counties and have indicated they plan to reach and begin construction in Macon County later this year. The Charter RDOF project is intended to provide service to over 8000 homes and businesses within the County, and they hope to complete their build in 2027.
All of the above programs will offer connection to awarded locations at no additional cost beyond the monthly price of service. This is required as part of the grant or subsidy agreements, which means that more than 11,000 Macon County residents will ultimately receive a high-speed broadband with NO connection fee.

Nantahala Broadband Expansion Project

Jeff Lee, LittleT Broadband
 
We appreciate the recent work by Thomas Sherrill of the Franklin Press in his effort to provide an overview of broadband expansion efforts in Macon County. Though Macon County has a number of projects "in the works", for many of us without or with limited access to high-speed internet it is hard to be patient as we wait for some of these project to begin connecting homes and businesses.
 
One such project that was initiated by Macon County in 2023 is the Nantahala Broadband Expansion project. After requesting  permission from the Board of Commissioners in the fall of 2022 and receiving approval in January of 2023, the Macon County Broadband Committee released a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking a provider to begin deployment of fiber broadband services in the Nantahala Township. 
 
Though the initial intent of the proposed project was to use County general funds in the form of a grant to kickstart this broadband effort similar to the project initiated for south Macon in 2020, within a week of the RFP release the County was notified of changes in the NC statutes governing ways that counties were allowed to use grants. To avoid entanglement with the new NC statute which restricts county’s abilities to offer grants for broadband expansion, the Broadband Committee changed the scope of the proposed project and revised the RFP. This revised RFP requested proposals to extend fiber broadband service to five (5) County facilities that serve the Nantahala township as anchor institutions with the goals of creating public WiFi hot spots, and improving public safety. Rather than offering a grant, the County’s new request was for the direct procurement of service to the listed 5 facilities, which included:
 
  • Nantahala Volunteer Fire & Rescue - Main Station, Wayah Rd.
  • Nantahala Volunteer Fire & Rescue - Substation, Winding Stair Rd
  • Nantahala EMS - Junaluska Rd
  • Nantahala Recreation Center - Junaluska Rd
  • New Nantahala Library and Community Center - White Oak Ln
BalsamWest and Charter Communications provided responses to the RFP, and after thorough review of the proposed solutions and timelines, at the recommendation of the Broadband Committee the Board of Commissioners approved the selection of BalsamWest to implement the project.  The Board further gave permission to the Committee to begin negotiations with BalsamWest and produce a formal agreement. The agreement was approved by the Board in September, which called for the County to pay BalsamWest $350,000 in non-recurring connection charges to construct the fiber network and $9,552 in an initial lump sum to cover internet service to the 5 facilities for the first year.
 
Since the execution of the formal agreement in September, BalsamWest has been working to complete engineering plans, acquire materials, seek permit approvals, and coordinate construction plans with a fiber contractor. At this time the permit process is mostly complete and BalsamWest hopes to begin fiber construction next month, January 2024. A representative from BalsamWest will be making an update presentation to the Macon County Board of Commissioners at the January 9th Board meeting.
 
To complement the fiber construction work which will connect the 5 Nantahala County facilities, the County has contracted LittleT Broadband to coordinate and administer the procurement and installation of the network equipment required at each facility to provide the internet and public WiFi capabilities. Through a Request for Quotations process LittleT has secured a network systems provider to procure and install equipment, and has applied for a broadband adoption grant through the Southwest Commission on behalf of Macon County which will be used to cover the equipment costs. We are excited to see this broadband expansion project come together. With a little luck on weather and equipment lead times, we are hopeful to see this project completed in Q2 of 2024.
 
Discussions have already begun on further broadband expansion in the Nantahala area after completion of this initial effort. The creation of this initial fiber network is just the stepping stone needed to support further expansion.

BalsamWest GREAT Grant for Macon County

Jeff Lee, Little T Broadband

BalsamWest Fibernet LLC applied for and received a GREAT award for Macon County. Though their application was submitted in May of 2022 at the same time as Frontier's application, the BalsamWest award was announced as part of GREAT Round 2 in July of 2023. The grant agreement was signed between BalsamWest, Macon County, and the State in September of 2023. This $992,000 grant will provide fiber service to 263 homes and businesses in the Otto and Scaly Mountain areas of Macon County. BalsamWest has 2 years to complete this build, which means they must activate service to all 263 awarded locations by September of 2025.

The County was pleased to see this grant award received, as it will leverage previous investments by the County and BalsamWest in building the south Macon fiber backbone. Though BalsamWest is already engaged in expanding fiber service to homes and businesses along the fiber route, this grant will help to accelerate that expansion effort.

BalsamWest has requested to provide a presentation to the Macon County Board of Commissioners in January 2024. We look forward to this update on their progress and to learn more about their future plans.

The PDF file available for download below provides a summary of the grant that was provided to the Board of Commissioners in July, and a map illustrating the award locations.

 

BalsamWest GREAT Award  

Frontier GREAT Grant for Macon County

Jeff Lee, Little T Broadband

The GREAT grant is a broadband grant program developed by the State of North Carolina to help address the need for rural broadband expansion. The Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) program was originally enacted in 2018 by the State legislature, but unfortunately the program was not sufficiently funded through State funds to make real impact across the state. In 2021 the GREAT program was funded with $350M of federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and the first awards from this newly funded program were announced in the fall of 2022.

Frontier Communications applied for and received a GREAT award for Macon County. The award was announced in September of 2022 and the grant agreement was signed between Frontier, Macon County, and the State in May of 2023. This $3.8M grant will provide fiber service to 2700 homes and businesses throughout the County. Frontier has 2 years to complete this build, which means they must activate service to all 2700 awarded locations by May of 2025.

Though there are many of us in Macon County that have had a less than favorable experience with them, Frontier has been communicating to us that they are working to reinvent themselves as a company. They went through bankruptcy 2020 and have emerged in 2021 as a company with new corporate management, new funding, and a new competitive corporate vision. Though only time will tell if they are successful in this endeavor, their vision seems solid and they are on a path toward this goal.

Since May of this year, Frontier has been actively engaged in planning and engineering for the build throughout the County. They currently have contractors working out in the community to assess the condition of power poles and other assets needed to complete the build. If you see Frontier contractors working in your area, that is a good sign that things are happening. We saw them out in the Tessentee area just this past week. Our understanding is that active construction will start on the project in January of 2024.

A representative from Frontier recently gave a presentation to the Macon County Board of Commissioners at the November 2023 meeting. A copy of the Frontier public presentation can be downloaded from the link below. Hopefully you will find this presentation very informative about their plans and build timeline.

Frontier achieving success with this GREAT grant program will provide benefit to not only the 2700 award locations but to many other nearby home and business locations across the County. We look forward to watching their progress.

 

Frontier Presentation to the MC BOC - Nov 14, 2023 HOT 

Charter RDOF Award in Macon County 2023

 Jeff Lee, Little T Broadband

One of the first broadband grant/subsidy programs to make the news in recent years was a program called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). This is a federal broadband subsidy program administered by the FCC in which areas defined by census blocks were assessed as eligible for funding if no homes in that block were receiving internet service of 25/3 or better. Internet service providers bid on these eligible blocks nation-wide through a reverse auction (lowest bidder wins). RDOF auction winners receive a federal subsidy based on the number of homes in the awarded census block which is paid out over a 10 year period. The funds for this subsidy come from the Universal Service Fund (USF) which is revenue that comes from fees leveed on telecommunication providers and FCC license holders and are not based on any of the recent federal funding legislation such as ARPA or IIJA. The RDOF auction 904 was held in 2020, and winners were announced in December of 2020. Actual awards to winning providers did not start rolling out until the second half of 2021 with many awards not issued until 2022.

In the State of North Carolina, Charter Communications won most of the RDOF awards and won all eligible census blocks in Macon County. Charter’s award was received from the FCC in March of 2022, and per the rules of the RDOF program they will have until March of 2028 (6 years) to build high-speed internet connections to all homes in their awarded census blocks. Charter began receiving subsidy payments from the USF in March of 2022 and will continue to receive subsidy payments until 2032 (10 years). Though all RDOF award recipients are required by the program to meet certain build commitments, they are measured against these commitments at the state level, so as long as they are building somewhere in the state and meeting the RDOF build commitments they remain in good standing with the program.

In Macon County, the RDOF award represents 60% of the eligible unserved locations (locations with less than 25/3 service). At the County level, we want very much for Charter to succeed and build to all committed locations. This will mean that over 8000 homes and businesses in the County will receive high-speed internet. Unfortunately the RDOF program for Macon County has a number of issues.

  • Charter is not yet building in Macon County. Though Charter is actively building elsewhere, they have no infrastructure in much of WNC, with the closest presence at the start of the program in Waynesville. This means that to get service into Macon County, Charter must first build across Haywood and Jackson counties.
  • Internet service to all awarded locations in all census blocks through RDOF is not a certainty. This means that though the RDOF awards exist for 60% of the County, there is no guarantee that the program will reach all of these locations. There are a variety of factors that can affect this, and unfortunately some will not come to light until very late in the 6 year build cycle (2028).
  • Areas (census blocks) that were awarded to Charter through RDOF area NOT eligible for other federal and state grant funds available for broadband expansion as long as the RDOF award holder remains in good standing. This issue becomes very important as many state programs have a 2 year build requirement, whereas RDOF has a 6 year build requirement.

A representative from Charter recently made a presentation to the Macon County Board of Commissioners at the November 2023 meeting. A link to a copy of the public presentation made to the Commissioners can be found at the bottom of this article. During this presentation, the Charter representative indicated that engineering and field assessment work have begun for Macon County, and it is their current plan to begin construction in Macon by Q2 of 2024 and to complete construction by mid 2027.

We continue to be hopeful that Charter will meet their tentative time commitment and will build connections to all awarded locations.

 

Charter Presentation to the MC BOC - Nov 14, 2023