Progress on the South Macon Fiber Backbone

Planning and development work is now under way on the South Macon Fiber Backbone project that is being executed by Balsam West.

As part of the planning effort, last Tuesday, May 18, we met with representatives from Balsam West at the Otto Community center and the Sky Valley-Scaly Mountain Volunteer Fire and Rescue facilities. Balsam West would like to house some of the network equipment that will support both Otto and Scaly Mountain in these respective facilities. The visits to these sites went well, with a number of implementation options discussed and tentative plans formed. Once a more concrete plan is ready for each site, we will be meeting with the Community Association Boards and Fire Departments to review and discuss in more detail. Ultimately the CAs and VFDs will need to approve co-location of the Balsam West equipment in the facilities.

Given the quantity of high-speed broadband that is being contstructed around the country, there is very high demand for fiber optic cable. Fiber production plants arround the country and in Europe are currently running beyond 100% to meet demand. This will likely impact our project to some degree, as the lead times to order and take delivery of new fiber optic cable may be 6-9 months. Balsam West will be working to build as much of the network as possible while waiting for delivery of some cable and electronic components.

Moving Forward

As many of you may have heard, Macon County and Balsam West Fibernet reached an agreement. This agreement was approved by the Macon County Board of Commissioners and the Balsam West Board of Directors in mid April, 2021.

As per the Request for Proposals from the County and the subsequent winning proposal from Balsam West, contstruction will begin on a fiber backbone in southern Macon County. This new backbone will extend from the Franklin city limits, to Otto, and on to Scaly Moutain. The completion of this backbone will initially bring high speed internet service to the Otto and Scaly Mountain community centers and volunteer fire and rescue facilities, and then enable expansion into the surrounding communities.

A joint press release on the project is forthcoming. We will post that when it becomes available.

 

February 2021 Update

First, let us appologize to our supporters that have been waiting for an update. Between waiting for news on grants, the holidays, and the pandemic, time has gotten away from us.

Though the original intent behind the formation of LittleT Broadband included applying for and securing grant funding in our own name, we have learned through research and exploration of this process that the grant programs available are structured to support established internet service providers. As a non-profit organization with no established business and customer base, we found it impossible to secure grants on our own.

That realization has pushed us to focus on the "facilitation" part of our charter.
Our work last fall was to assist our partner, Balsam West, in applying for grants and to submit a proposal to Macon County in response to the Request for Proposal (RFP) released in October.

NC GREAT Grant Program

As detailed in our previous blog, during early October we worked with Balsam West and the Appalachian Regional Commission to help prepare a grant application and proposal for submission to the NC GREAT 2020 CARES Act Supplemental Round. That application was submitted on October 14, 2020.

After some funding delays in the NC GREAT process, winners of this grant round were announced in mid December. Unfortunately, Balsam West was not successful in securing a grant during this round. Out of over 80 applicants, only 11 providers were selected. This round will distribute approximately $30M to projects in 18 counties. No awards were given in Macon county.

The feeling is that the NC DIT Broadband GREAT committee may have focused more on pure fiber proposals. There is also speculation that Morris receiving a grant for Macon county in 2019 may have created a disadvantage.

The hope was that funds from this grant would help develop and accelerate the distribution of new high speed internet servcies from the planned backbone network to homes and businesses. We must now look to other funding sources to drive this expansion.

Macon County Request For Proposals (RFP)

During the end of October, LittleT Broadband assisted Balsam West in the effort to prepare a response to Macon County's RFP. This proposal was submitted on November 2, 2020. In December, the county contacted Balsam West informing them that they had been selected as the winner of the south Macon internet expansion project.

Since the start of the year, Balsam West has been working with the county to formalize the contractual business relationship. That work should be completed by the end of February, and we are hopeful that work on the network backbone project will begin sometime in March.

Construction of the network backbone will bring critical high-speed internet capability into the Otto and Scaly areas. As the backbone is completed, sevice will initially be offered to those residences and businesses along the path. Further expansion into the rest of the community will happen as funding permits.

SpaceX StarLink

We are often asked, what about StarLink? When will it be available here?

SpaceX continues to make progress with their StarLink service. At this time, they are still in the public beta test phase, and are only able to offer their "Better Than Nothing" service in northern lattitudes. This new service appears to have much promise, offering speeds from 40Mbs-120Mbps with latency of around 40ms.

However, the limited service that is available is still far from prime time. Though the speed and latency appear to meet expectations, there are constant black out periods lasting from seconds to minutes long where no connection is available. Much longer outages have also been experienced by some testers. This issue is due to the fact that SpaceX still does not have enough operational satellites in place to maintain a constant connection. It is anticipated that this condition will improve over time.

SpaceX's ability to extend service into our area will depend on their ability to get many hundreds of additional satellites aloft, and to build a network of new ground stations in the southern US. Based on their current rate of progress, we do not anticipate that beta testing for the southern US will begin until mid to late 2021 at the earliest. Keep in mind that availability of beta testing still does not constitute a commercial service offering. As their initial beta service has been running close to 6 months now, it is not unreasonable to expect that a beta period in the sothern US would last 6 months or more before commercial service becomes available. So, this could mean availability sometime in 2022 for most folks.

SpaceX received a sizeable award from the FCC Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction last fall. No awardees have yet received any federal funding as they must submit their long form applications later this month. Once long forms are submitted, reviewed/vetted, and accepted, award winners like SpaceX will be eligible to start receiving funding payments. It should be noted that there are groups and some members of congress that are contesting a number of the FCC RDOF awards. It is possible that some of the awardees may lose part or all of their funding opportunities after review from the new FCC leadership.

LittleT Broadband Update for October

Jeff Lee, LittleT Broadband

LittleT Broadband is continuing the work to pursue development and deployment of high-speed internet in Otto and Scaly Mountain. As we have mentioned in previous updates, the biggest obstacle is to secure funding to build the network backbone and infrastructure needed to deliver high-speed data to homes and businesses in our area. As we all know, our terrain and sparse population make this an expensive proposition, that no for-profit company has been willing to undertake without financial assistance.

During early October, the LittleT tech team worked with Balsam West and the Southwestern Commission to help prepare materials for an application to the NC GREAT 2020 CARES Act Supplementary Round grant program. The application was completed and submitted on October 14. The goal is to obtain and use NC GREAT grant funding to help build the network infrastructure needed to reach homes and businesses from the proposed backbone.

So, what has happened with the backbone network project?

As mentioned in the September update, progress was made with Macon County, and the commissioners approved an RFP (Request For Proposals) back in early August for broadband expansion in south Macon. Winning the RFP comes with the promise of grant funds. The intended usage of the associated grant is to fund the construction of the critical backbone network that will bring connectivity to Otto and Scaly from the Franklin city limits.

The county attorney's office and NCIT Broadband division were unable to release the RFP until October 2nd. The timing of this actually worked in our favor, as it allowed focus on the NC GREAT grant application earlier in the month. With work on the GREAT application behind us, we have recently been engaged with Balsam West in helping to prepare materials for the RFP response, which is due Monday, Nov 2.

With funding applications and responses submitted, we hope to hear outcomes on these initiatives in the December timeframe. Of course these outcomes will dictate our next steps.

Thanks to all for your continued support.

 

 

LittleT Broadband Needs Help

Tony Deakins, LittleT Broadband

LittleT Broadband Services has recently made substantive progress with the county in working with BalsamWest FiberNet to pull backbone fiber from Addison Bridge Road to connect with Haywood EMC’s fiber at Brown Road. That will carry the backbone up into Scaly Mountain, from where additional fiber will be installed to complete the backbone connection to Highlands. We are now focused on the distribution planning, including raising money, funding grants, and other funding vehicles to reduce the actual cost of connecting homes and businesses to the backbone. Also, there are grants that must be ready to leverage that subsidize the monthly billing once connections have been established.

To that end, we are URGENTLY seeking volunteers to work with our board and our partners — Balsam and Haywood — to identify grant/funding opportunities and to develop the applications as required. We urgently need people who have skills, experience and/or good research talents. The success we have with funding will affect how fast we can distribute broadband access services and what the services will ultimately cost.

For more information about volunteering to help, or for questions, go to the littletbroadband.org "Contact Us" page. Thank you for helping us help your community to obtain broadband access!



New RFP Approved by Macon County

Jeff Lee, LittleT Broadband

A recent article in the Macon County news has prompted a number of questions from Otto and Scaly Residents.

https://themaconcountynews.com/macon-county-takes-huge-step-toward-improving-broadband/

Specifically, how does this RFP (Request For Proposals) affect the work in progress by LittleT Broadband?

The short answer is that this RFP was created on our behalf.

As you may recall, the Macon County Commissioners voted last September to allocate grant money for LittleT Broadband to support planning work on a network for the Otto and Scaly Mtn areas. This approval was given provisionally, pending review by the county attorney. This money was never given to LittleT, as the county attorney believes that NC counties do not have the legal authority to provide grant money in that way.

Much of the planning and initial engineering work for which that initial money was targeted has now been accomplished through other means. We worked with our partners Balsam West and Haywood EMC to develop a detailed plan. This plan was then forwarded to the county.

Fast forward to this past spring. After several rounds of meetings and discussions between Macon County officials, Balsam West, and Little T, a new request was made for the $580K which is mentioned in the RFP. This money is targeted to fund the construction of a fiber backbone leg from Franklin to Otto, where it will meet up with other fiber owned by Haywood EMC. Other portions of the backbone network are being funded through other means. Currently, no high-speed network extends through the Otto and Scaly areas, so construction of this new backbone is vital for any high-speed internet development/expansion whatsoever.

Though most of the commissioners have been very supportive, the county attorney insisted that the only way the money could be allocated was as a grant awarded via an RFP to an established ISP (Internet Service Provider). So at the request of the county attorney, an RFP was drafted by the NC DIT Broadband Division, and the commissioners officially approved it this past week.

Though the RFP is worded (as required by NC law) to be open to any internet service provider, to our knowledge there are no other providers with plans ready to create the needed expansion and waiting to respond and bid on this. Little T is working directly with Balsam West to prepare and deliver an RFP response to Macon County. The expansion plan for southern Macon County is the one that has already been developed by Little T and Balsam West, and Balsam West is the designated ISP.

Though we were hoping to avoid a forced jump through this hoop, it is indeed progress.

Community Broadband Survey Results

Bill Kirkman, Little T Broadband volunteer

Recently on CBS Sunday Morning there was a segment on “The great broadband divide: Living without high-speed internet access”. Microsoft completed a study that was quoted in the piece showing 162 million Americans don't have broadband internet access. As of 2015, the FCC defines broadband as a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload. The US census bureau estimates the US population July 2019 was 328 million. Half of the US population is unable to access broadband internet service.

The show also states the average download speed in the US is 133 Mbps. According to the Little T Broadband survey, the average for Scaly Mountain and Otto community is 1.3 Mbps (1% of the national average). Your survey feedback provides insight into how we as a community, and you individually, are impacted by this lack of broadband service.

Between March and June this year Little T Broadband asked the Scaly Mountain and Otto communities for feedback about their access and desire for broadband internet. Since the survey was web based, responses are skewed towards those that have internet access. Likely, there is a significant percentage of folks who did not participate in the survey process because they do not have internet access, were not aware, or had no way to communicate information to Little T Broadband.

The response was tremendous with 225 responses representing 8% of the Otto and Scaly Mountain property parcels. Responses were equally spread between Otto and Scaly Mountain with 96% of the responses from residences and 4% from businesses. Here is what the survey said:

Almost everyone sees the value in internet access:

  • 60% interested in extended Internet
  • 39% interested in basic internet

Current internet provider satisfaction (scale of 1 Very Dissatisfied to 5 Very Satisfied)

  • 1.99 average satisfaction across all providers
  • 1.87 satisfaction with Frontier (67% of survey respondents with internet service)
  • 2.4 satisfaction with Morris (5% of respondents)
  • 2.22 satisfaction with Other (likely satellite) (27% of respondents)

Internet usage:

  • 110 tele-work from home
  • 52 have students in the home
  • 36 use medical devices requiring internet access

Additional related services in which community members are interested:

  • 60% TV services
  • 53% Telephone
  • 24% Security

Cellular coverage

  • 54% of respondents have No Cellular coverage
  • 23% have LTE/4G
  • 13% have 3G
  • 9% have 1x 

Perhaps the most insightful section of the survey is the Additional Comments section. A universal theme seems to be that “Everyone no matter how rural should have good services for health and safety.”

For those that have internet service it is often unreliable in both speed and connectivity:

“Connection speed is variable during the day. The download speed is frequently less than what was reported in this survey and it is seldom much better.“

“Internet service is inconsistent and weak when we have it at all. Have given up on entertainment but can’t forfeit health and economical features that are as necessary as indoor plumbing.”

Many residents require reliable Broadband internet service for their jobs, and some are unable to live in our community because of the lack of service:

“Please help! My job is dependent upon internet and cell service. Am tired of going to the library to work!”

“My wife works from home 100% of the time, often her work requires a high-speed Internet connection. She has to leave home and go use Internet connection at a friend’s house with better service.”

“We have operated a business at our location in Scaly Mountain… which has been extremely difficult at times with little to no internet service. Cannot tell you the days that we have not been able to run credit card charges when checking in guests or when trying to add payment for services. …not being able to send and receive email or to bring up websites or… access many pieces of software that we use in our business.”

“…family, with a student, moved away due to lack of internet service in this area. They needed it to work from home and for student’s homework. They would seriously consider coming back if there was internet service.”

“I bought the house 3 years ago and I planned on moving there full time after 2 years of owning but I can’t because I cannot get internet service there. I’m a transplant pharmaceutical rep and cover Tenn / Ga. Which Scaly is the perfect location but I can’t work from home because I can’t get internet service much less even try to make a call on my cell phone…. This is ridiculous and I may have to sell because I can never live and work there. I had no idea that western NC would be like a 3rd world when it came to internet and cell phone coverage.”

“As a realtor it is sometimes difficult to complete sales in many areas of Scaly due to lack of or caliber of cell service. Many potential buyers are younger families from Atlanta who work remotely with national and international companies.”

It is clear there is a strong need for reliable high-speed internet service in the Scaly Mountain and Otto communities. Little T Broadband is a nonprofit organization staffed by volunteers that seeks to bring high-speed fiber-based internet service to our communities. It is a monumental task that will require substantial funding. We are well on our way developing local partnerships with Haywood EMC, BalsamWest and obtaining support from Macon county.

Thank you for providing feedback through the survey. It provides essential insight to better understand the communities needs and desires. The Little T Broadband team will use this information to guide future decisions and actions.

 

  1. StarLink
  2. LittleT June Update
  3. Survey Thank You
  4. LittleT April Update

Page 7 of 11