Macon County Broadband Update for December 2025

We have had many active broadband expansion projects around Macon County this past year.
Here is a brief update on what has been accomplished and what is in store for 2026.

Active and Completed Projects for 2025

Frontier GREAT Grant

This has been the largest broadband expansion project to date visible to Macon County Residents. Frontier received a grant through the North Carolina GREAT grant program to provide fiber service to approximately 2700 locations across the County. In addition, Frontier is investing a large portion of their own funds to provide fiber service to an additional 20,000+ residences and businesses.

Frontier’s primary contractor, ITG, and many smaller sub contractors have been busy all across Macon County installing both aerial and underground fiber. Frontier has teams of its own technicians beginning to connect customers to the new fiber network. Though fiber work has slowed over the holiday season and due to some permitting delays they are working through with Duke Energy, we anticipate this activity to pick up pace after the first of the year. Frontier has filed for an extension with NCDIT to complete their grant related work by June of 2026, though we anticipate work to connect non grant locations will continue past the end of 2026.

You can go to Frontier’s website at https://frontier.com and enter your address to check on fiber availability. If fiber is already available to your location, you can schedule installation, and if not you will be put on an email list to notify you of updates.

BalsamWest GREAT Grant

This project is another funded through a grant from the NC GREAT Grant program. BalsamWest is working to connect approximately 270 locations in the Otto and Scaly Mountain area. This project builds from the fiber backbone constructed as part of the South Macon Broadband Expansion project completed in 2022. To date BalsamWest has completed all of their underground fiber work and is working to finish up the remaining aerial fiber installation. They have already begun connecting homes in the Otto area and should begin connections in Scaly Mountain after the first of the year. BalsamWest is scheduled to complete this project by the fall of 2026.

Cowee School Public WiFi

Cowee School is the largest community anchor institution in the Cowee area, and is a location included in the Frontier GREAT grant award list. In anticipation of fiber availability at this location the County used grant funding made available through the Southwestern Commission to upgrade and expand the wifi network at the School. The network upgrade and public wifi work was completed in the fall of 2025. Though fiber has not yet arrived at the school, the new public wifi network is active using the existing DSL service. As soon as it becomes available, service to the new network will be upgraded to fiber.

Carson Community Center Public WiFi

As part of the new Macon County Resiliency Program kicked off by the WNC Communities, Carson Community Center was one of several facilities identified that did not have any internet connectivity. We were able to work with the Carson Community Club to get Frontier Fiber Service installed, and utilize some remaining grant funds left over from the Nantahala and Cowee School projects to purchase and install public WiFi equipment. This work was completed on December 19th and public WiFi is now available at the Carson Community Center facility.

Future Projects for 2026

Frontier CAB Grant

In the spring of 2025 Frontier received an additional grant through the NC CAB program. This grant will help Frontier connect and serve over 400 additional locations in the Sanders Town area with fiber internet. Frontier’s contractor ITG has begun staging material at their facility on the GA Road, and we expect construction for this project to be ongoing throughout 2026.

Charter/Spectrum RDOF Subsidy Award

In 2022 Charter/Spectrum received a subsidy award from the FCC RDOF program to bring fiber service to over 8000 locations in Macon County. Though Charter has been building in Jackson, they have yet to cross Cowee Mountain and begin active fiber construction in Macon, and they have until 2028 to complete fiber deployment under this program. We are hopeful they will begin work in Macon County after the first of the year and that they will complete their obligation to serve ALL locations awarded within the County.

NTIA BEAD Grants

NTIA is the federal agency responsible for the $42.5B BEAD grant program funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law in 2021. The BEAD program was intended to bring sweeping relief to rural areas that still do not have high speed internet available, and to build lasting broadband infrastructure that would place rural communities on equal footing with metro areas. The NTIA spent 2021-2023 working with states to allocate funding fairly for each state based on need and to approve grant programs for each state that will be used to distribute these funds.

In January 2025, the new administration put a halt on the BEAD program funding and canceled another broadband grant program that was created as part of the legislation. In June of 2025, the NTIA released updated rules for the BEAD program that eliminated the preference for 20+ year fiber infrastructure and created new grant award requirements including “Benefit of the Bargain”. In other words, rather than allowing states to select providers and technology they felt most appropriate for given areas, all states had to restart their grant process and select the lowest cost applicant.

The State of North Carolina (NCDIT) restarted their BEAD grant application process under the new rules in July and submitted a final award plan to NTIA in August. On December 19th after several rounds of negotiation with NTIA, an NC Final Proposal was approved by NTIA. This approved award proposal will allocate approximately $300M of the $1.5B allocated to the State of North Carolina to serve its rural communities. It is unclear at this time if NC will be able to access the remanning $1.2B for further broadband expansion, or whether these funds will be reclaimed by the fed.

Under this newly approved grant program, within Macon County Charter/Spectrum is to be awarded funding for connection of 1464 locations to fiber, and Amazon LEO (Kuiper) is to be awarded funding to connect 168 locations through their new satellite service. Final awards to these providers is pending execution of contracts with the state.

Smaller Broadband Grant Programs

We are working to access a couple of smaller grant programs with the goal of continuing to expand public wifi around the county. Stay tuned for future project announcements along these lines after the first of the year.