The Initiative
“The Collaborative Broadband Initiative was instrumental in assisting Gates County in developing a locally driven strategy to provide access to high-speed broadband to all citizens. None of this would have occurred, as effective and efficient as it did without their assistance and constant support.”
-Dr. Althea Riddick (l), Gates County resident, 2025 Rural Center Community Advocate of the Year
Partnerships Work
The Collaborative Broadband Initiative (CBI) serves as a regional initiative that partners with local governments, Councils of Government (COGs), key stakeholders and internet service providers (ISPs) to expand high-speed internet access across rural North Carolina. To date, the CBI has served 33 counties across North Carolina, located within two economically distressed regions: Western and Northeastern North Carolina.
Over the past several years, and with broadband funding from RDOF, ARPA, and IIJA, the Division of Broadband & Digital Opportunity at the North Carolina Department of Information Technology has successfully awarded broadband deployment grants around the state. Across the 33-county CBI region, awards include:
- 61,694 awarded locations to providers by the FCC under the RDOF program
- 46,926 awarded locations to pre-qualified providers under the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) program, funded by ARPA
- 31,415 awarded locations to pre-qualified providers under all versions of the Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program (CAB Round 1, CAB Round 2, and GREAT to CAB, all ARPA-funded programs)
- 2,064 awarded locations to pre-qualified providers under the Stop-Gap Solutions Program (funded by ARPA)
Dedicated Team
A dedicated team of industry professionals and experts, including staff from the NC Rural Center (Michael Kelly, Dave Kaiser, and Patrick Woodie); Mighty River, LLC (Joe Freddoso); Sural Consulting (Jeff Sural); and Broadband Catalysts (Brian Rathbone, Deborah Watts, Julia Byers, Mark DeFalco, and Stephanie Jane Edwards) has led the CBI effort to deliver advice, counsel and services to support the development and improvement of broadband infrastructure in rural North Carolina. These services are described below, demonstrating a commitment to ensure geography alone does not limit connectivity.
Services Delivered
The first of four areas of work produced by the CBI was to provide technical assistance and broadband investment planning for rural communities. The CBI primarily worked with regional COGs, as well as county administration, ISPs, and other regional stakeholders for assistance in preparing to pursue federal and state broadband infrastructure grant opportunities. Work included developing applications, determining required support levels, and devising detailed grant implementation plans for each county, COG and ISP served under the CBI.
“The Rural Center’s Collaborative Broadband Initiative played an instrumental role in helping us keep internet service providers that have received state or federal grants accountable to connecting homes and businesses in the region.”
- Russ Harris, Southwestern Commission executive director
Identifying locations where broadband is unavailable has been a critical step to achieving universal access. State and federal grant programs to connect homes and businesses rely on this information to determine where to direct funding. However, federal maps and data have historically overrepresented broadband availability.
The CBI, with help from Broadband Catalysts’ Broadband Analyzer, along with accompanying spatial analysis and AI tools conducted geospatial analytics to locate unserved areas and locations by combining federal, state, and local sources to provide a detailed representation of broadband availability in the regions and shared this information with counties, COGs, and ISPs. This capability also allowed the CBI to fully support counties interested in affecting decisions impacting the BEAD, CAB, and Stop-Gap Solutions processes and implementation. All data is housed in a repository on the CBI webpage and is available for download.
The CBI held last-mile service provider grantees accountable by monitoring construction progress and construction quality through detailed meetings with providers and COGs that helped identify issues and areas that were spot checked in the field or through software analysis.
The collaborative began by offering individualized "office hours" to counties to understand previous and current states of funding for broadband under various federal and state grant programs. Counties were receptive to these in-person and virtual meetings, which provided:
- Assessments of previous broadband infrastructure funding within regions
- Current maps of unserved and underserved Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) in regions
- Updates from ISPs that received broadband infrastructure grants, on the status of their funded broadband deployments, milestones, and projected delivery dates.
The CBI recognized that closing the digital divide demanded more than infrastructure deployment and data analysis; it called for a sharing of knowledge and experience, community education, and a unified voice advocating for digital opportunity.
Through established partnerships with the North Carolina Department of Information Technology Division of Broadband & Digital Opportunity and several nonprofit organizations, the CBI connected COG officials and volunteers with the resources needed, which included the promotion of low-cost subscriptions and subsidies, access to reduced-priced computers, and hands-on digital skills training though the submission of formal comments on broadband plans such as The State of North Carolina Digital Equity Plan, Initial Proposal Volumes 1 and 2 of the North Carolina's 5-Year BEAD plan, and North Carolina Moving Forward with BEAD, post issuance of a Restructuring Policy Notice released by NTIA and the consideration of alternative forms of technology in the delivery of internet access.
For the past several years, the CBI convened broadband stakeholders from across the state at the NC Rural Center’s annual Rural Summit. To highlight success stories and best practices, the Summit has recognized community leaders making significant contributions to closing the digital divide.
In addition to hosting expert panels on funding programs, telehealth, digital navigation, workforce development, and computer refurbishment, the Summit sessions and subsequent broadband-related sessions allowed for greater connection and networking by participants.