NTIA and StarLink

Jeff Lee, LittleT Broadband

NTIA Broadband Infrastructure Grant Announcement

NTIA released an announcement Friday afternoon on the disposition of 2021 Broadband Infrastructure Grant awards. Unfortunately Macon County was NOT a recipient, but this is no surprise to us given the recent FCC RDOF bid authorizations in our county.

Given the very small pool of funds for the 2021 NTIA grant program ($288M nation-wide), it appears that NTIA only awarded a single grant in those states that received awards. The NTIA grant award winner for the state of North Carolina was Lenoir county in the far southeastern portion of the state.

StarLink

We have received contact from a couple of community members that have been notified by StarLink that they would be receiving their StarLink terminals. Not sure if anyone has actually received their terminals yet, but it does sound like SpaceX is beginning to slowly expand coverage in our area. Though you can go the StarLink website, sign up, and pay a deposit to receive service at some point in the future, understand that they are just beginning to contact individuals who signed up over a year ago. It will take some time for the StarLink program to work through their 1M+ backlog and catch up to demand.

If you have been contacted by StarLink recently to receive a terminal, or you have already received it, set it up, and now have access to the StartLink service, please contact us and tell us about your experience.

Please Take the NC Broadband Survey

https://www.ncbroadband.gov/broadband-nc/north-carolina-broadband-survey

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but one of the most important ways everyone in the area can help is by taking the NC Broadband Survey. Please take 5 minutes to complete this survey if you have not done so already.

All counties in the WNC region need this vital information to support grant funding efforts. We are actively using information from this survey to justify which areas in our county are in need of high-speed broadband service and are eligible to receive broadband grant funding. If you live in an area that has no internet access or does not have at least 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up, you need to report it through the NC Broadband Survey.

For homes & businesses without internet service, participants can take the survey by phone. Residents without internet service but with phones capable of text messaging can text “internet” to 919-750-0553. Standard text messaging rates will apply.

Can't Text? Residents with landlines or cellphones that do not have texting capability may place a voice call to 919-750-0553. An interactive voice response system will guide them through a series of short questions to obtain the caller’s address and register it in the database as having no internet capability at all.