Local providers seek grants
Officials are anxiously awaiting notification on whether internet service provider companies in Cherokee County will receive grant money to expand high-speed broadband.
Earlier this month, Murphy Cable TV and Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corp. both applied for a grant through the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology program. The program is a state initiative that funds the terrestrial deployment of broadband within unserved areas of economically distressed counties.
Last year, GREAT grants were only made available to areas that met the following criteria:
- The area had to be designated as being in a Tier 1 county.
- The area had to be served by less than 10 megabytes per second download and 1 megabyte per second upload speed at the time the application was filed.
- The grant had to be used to serve an entire census block.
However, this year, GREAT grants are available to Tier 1, 2 and 3 counties that are served by less than 25 megabytes per second download and 3 megabytes per second upload speed at the time of filing an application. In addition, broadband provider companies will not have to cover an entire census block if awarded funds through the program.
“Sometimes, one company cannot service an entire census area because of a mountain,” Cherokee County Economic Development Director Paul Worley said.
Tier 2 county
Cherokee County is considered a Tier 2 county. Tier rankings are determined by a county’s unemployment rate, median household income, population growth and property tax base.
While local officials are optimistic that this county will receive grant money for broadband expansion, there are numerous eastern North Carolina Tier 1 counties served by less than 10 megabytes per second download and 1 megabyte per second upload speed competing for the same available funds.
“Compared to other counties, Cherokee is doing OK,” Worley said while explaining the 20-year struggle to expand broadband in the county. “The eastern part of the state has terrible Tier 1 counties with high unemployment. Those areas are devastated economically, and natural disasters continually tear apart the towns, which are totally dependent on tourism.”
The last mile
What’s known as last-mile connectivity is another obstacle to expanding broadband in this area. Last-mile connectivity is a phrase widely used in the telecommunications industry to refer to the final leg of a network that delivers services to retail consumers.
Local officials say Cherokee County has the core infrastructure in place to provide broadband to area households. However, the costs to run fiber lines from the trunk to a home is expensive.
Officials say it could cost $20,000-$40,000 per mile to run aerial or buried fiber cable from a trunk to a consumer. Local residents are often told they must pay about $8,000 to run a broadband fiber line to their house.
Of course, broadband can also be accessed wirelessly. However, the county’s geography often creates problems with line of sight. Not only would the provider have to run a power line up a mountain to a wireless tower, they would also need an unimpeded line of sight to broadcast the signal back down to homes.
“There’s no way that you could go up a mountain and have a line of sight for every community down below,” Worley said. “Therefore, companies must find an area with a number of properties that make it worth their investment. “Some of those areas only have two dozen properties and no economy of scale. Even if a company picks up a dozen houses in an area, at what point does it stop being profitable to run line to other properties that are spread further out?
“Think of it sort of like a water line. Murphy and Andrews town water only goes out so far because they can’t afford to provide water countywide.”
Holdup on the trail
Provider companies also encounter environmental obstacles that prevent broadband expansion. Such is the case with Blue Ridge Mountain EMC, which received a $3 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant in 2018 to expand broadband to more than 800 homes in Grape Creek and Hanging Dog.
“We have been waiting for authorization to proceed for about two years,” Blue Ridge Mountain EMC Interim General Manager Erik Brinke said. “We’re ready to go with construction, but the USDA and the U.S. Forest Service are sensitive to the Trail of Tears, which is near a portion of where we’re going to be doing our project.
“I find that to be quite ironic because we got special consideration and extra points, which helped us win the grant, because we had Eastern Band tribal areas within the area we are going to serve. So, the thing that got us extra points to get us the award is the same thing that’s holding us up right now.”
Since federal bureaucracy is holding up expansion in Grape Creek and Hanging Dog, Brinke sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows last week to see if he could intervene and push the project forward.
“We’re working on it real hard, and we’re not giving up,” Brinke said, adding that federal officials want the company to pay for an archaeological study to determine the impact of broadband expansion in Grape Creek and Hanging Dog. “We’re not going to build anything anywhere that’s not been previously disturbed. Every foot of fiber that we will place underground or overhead is going in previously disturbed areas.”
Neighbors network
In the meantime, Blue Ridge Mountain EMC has implemented a Neighborhood Networking Program that allows households to recruit neighbors that commit to signing up for broadband service, which then demonstrates whether the expansion will be profitable for the company. As of today, the program has convinced the company to expand broadband to Cook Bridge Road, Glen Stalcup Road, Johnsonville Road and Partridge Lane.
“The Neighborhood Networking Program is very popular and successful,” Brinke said. “It forces the customer to play an active role in helping us solve their broadband problem.”
Meanwhile, county lawmakers are hesitant to use taxpayer dollars to supplement broadband expansion because of two main reasons:
- The use of tax dollars creates an issue regarding ownership of the fiber assets.
- It’s difficult to choose which areas of the 455-square-mile county deserve to be improved using tax dollars.
“What if the county used taxpayer dollars to expand broadband in Wolf Creek, but couldn’t ever use tax money to expand in Unaka or Topton?” County Manager Randy Wiggins asked. “All of the county residents are paying into the tax pool, but only a certain small area would benefit from use of those funds for broadband.”
Officials expect to know whether local providers will receive GREAT grant funds to expand broadband in parts of Cherokee County by the end of November.