Charter and Brightspeed have formally announced broadband funding wins in the latest round of funding through the North Carolina GREAT program. The program targets unserved and underserved areas and requires providers to deploy speeds of at least 100 Mbps symmetrically.
The state broadband office announced the awards in July but did not indicate the dollar amounts of the awards.
Also this week, the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, which administers broadband programs for the state, received NTIA approval on the five-year plan required for participation in the BEAD rural broadband funding program.
Brightspeed
Brightspeed said it won approximately $12 million for four counties, bringing the total funding awarded to the company to date in the GREAT program to about $103 million. According to a press release from North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper about the awards, the four counties are Halifax, Nash, Person and Wake.
A spreadsheet from the North Carolina Department of Information Technology shows that Brightspeed contributed matching funds of approximately $3.7 million to the four projects.
Brightspeed is the company that bought Lumen/CenturyLink operations in 20 states.
Charter
Charter won awards for eight counties in the July funding round and, as of this morning, had issued press releases about five of them.
- The company won $1.3 million in Montgomery county. The county will contribute about $500,000 and Charter will contribute about $240,000.
- The company won $1.6 million in Beaufort county. The county will contribute about $150,000 and Charter will contribute about $146,000.
- The company won $756,000 in Caldwell county. The county will contribute about $50,000 and Charter will contribute about $83,400.
- The company won $3.9 million in Moore county. The county will contribute $280,000 and Charter will contribute $3.9 million
- The company won $3.8 million in Burke county. The county will contribute about $3.8 million and Charter will contribute about $1.6 million.
The other three counties for which the company won funding in July were Caswell, Catawba, and Pitt. A Charter spokesperson provided the following details about the awards:
- Caswell County-
Total project cost: $3.1M
State subsidy received: $2.6M
County contribution: $10K
Charter contribution: $460,466 - Catawba County-
Total project cost: $3.6M
State subsidy received: $ 3.1M
County contribution: $100K
Charter contribution: $453K - Pitt County-
Total project cost: $1.2M
State subsidy received: $1M
County contribution: $125K
Charter contribution: $62k
Focus Broadband
Focus Broadband, formerly known as ATMC, announced that fiber broadband at speeds of up to 1 Gbps was available in a county for which the company won GREAT funding in a previous round. The company partnered with Bladen County in the application and won a $2.9 million grant for the deployment in the western part of the county. Focus Broadband contributed an additional $307,989 in matching funds to the project.
The company also won funding in the July round of GREAT funding for Perquimans County.
Additional information about GREAT and other North Carolina funding programs, as well as North Carolina broadband news coverage and links to relevant state web pages can be found on the Broadband Nation page for North Carolina.
