Mia Overton
moverton@thefranklinpress.com
The state House of Representatives unanimously passed on May 26 House Bill 947, which would provide $750 million in federal funding to expand high-speed broadband internet access in all 100 counties of North Carolina.
The bill, called the GREAT Broadband Expansion Act, creates the Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program to supplement funds that counties receive from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
The bill appropriates $400 million to the new CAB program and $350,000,000 from the State Fiscal Recovery Fund to the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) Fund. That fund was created in 2018, and the state usually allocates $15 million a year for the program.
The bill would allow counties to initiate a bid process to select a provider for broadband infrastructure expansion into identified unserved or underserved areas. The county and the state would each be responsible for a portion of the project cost using ARPA funds.
After being sent to the Senate, the bill passed a first reading on May 27 and was referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations.
House Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) said he is keeping leaders in his district aware of bills such as this and encourages them to start planning. “Be prepared now,” he said.
The money will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, and counties that are prepared and have plans in place will have the advantage. No county will receive a CAB fund grant of more than $4 million in a single fiscal year.
Even once a bill such as HB 947 is signed into law, it will take a while before people see the impact. Gillespie said the county would identify the areas that need service, start the bid process, and then the design phase could easily take a year or more.
He said people also need to realize that because of the nationwide issue with broadband, Macon County is competing with the rest of the United States. Lead times and construction costs are going up. There’s a high demand for labor, construction, fiber optic cable and the hardware required.
“Your legislators hear you. They understand it, they understand what the problem is,” Gillespie said. “They have some legislation that they feel like will not fix the problem but will help us get down the road where we need to go. But understand it takes time.”
Gillespie said the COVID pandemic really made people aware of how reliant we are on internet access. “Obviously it’s an extremely hot topic and it should be,” he said. “Now is a good time to have that conversation because we’ve got so much of this COVID money that is available, and I can’t think of a better use for it.”
He said at one point broadband only impacted a certain population. Now we see internet access as an issue for kids even before they start school, for the school systems, throughout a person’s work life, for telemedicine and banking.
“It touches all of us regardless of how much money we have, who we are, what age we are. It’s so important,” Gillespie said.
With more federal and state dollars being allocated to building broadband infrastructure and service, Gillespie thinks we are moving in the right direction. “I’ve said before, until it becomes a priority for the United States government, for the North Carolina state government, and Macon County government, when I say priority, I’m talking about dollars, until it becomes a priority we’re never going to get there.”
Gillespie has sponsored several house bills to aid in expanding broadband services.
He is one of the primary sponsors for HB957, which would allow the creation of co-ops, similar to electric co-ops, to provide broadband service.
When asked if such a system is necessary, Gillespie said, “When you compare where we are at with broadband with where we were at when we were trying to get power, what would we have done had we not had those cooperatives? I think we would be in a different place. Would it hurt to have it? I think the answer is no.”
The bill also would create the “North Carolina Rural Broadband Authority” consisting of nine members – two appointed by the speaker of the House of Representatives, two appointed by the president pro tempore of the Senate, and five appointed by the governor. The purpose of the authority would be the secure broadband service for areas of the state where service is not currently offered or where service is inadequate.
HB 950 focuses on unserved and underserved areas. The bill would allow counties to initiate a bid process that would connect unserved or underserved households located within one mile of existing broadband infrastructure. The cost of the expansion would be covered by a grant from the state’s County Broadband Deployment Fund, matching funds from the county, and the broadband provider. The bill would allocate $25 million to the fund for fiscal year 2021-2022 and no county could receive more than $2 million from the fund.
“It’s different from any other bill that’s been through the legislature this year in that everybody has some skin in it. Everybody gets a cut, but everybody has something in it,” said Gillespie, who is one of the primary sponsors on the bill. “I’m real excited about this bill.” The bill has bi-partisan support with two Republicans and two Democrats as the primary sponsors.
HB816 would allow the DOT to install telecommunication cables within the existing right-of-way and recover the cost by leasing the conduit to private telecommunication companies that would use the cable to provide service to areas not already served.
HB289 allocates $1 million to the Department of Information Technology to refine and prepare more accurate statewide broadband maps.
HB815 is meant to facilitate the expansion of broadband service in unserved areas by “ensuring timely and nondiscriminatory access to municipal and electric membership cooperative utility poles, ducts, and conduits and just and reasonable rates.” The bill would also authorize counties to provide grants to broadband service providers.