Charla Duncan has spent years working to connect her neighbors to high-speed internet in their rural community of Warren County, North Carolina. Bringing broadband to rural areas is a piecemeal process, creating a patchwork quilt of connectivity and coverage. Your address might have service, while your next-door neighbor’s home does not. Federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is filling those gaps across Warren County and rural America.

Duncan serves as community and economic development director for Warren County, where her family has lived for generations. She grew up in Macon and left for college, working as a teacher, writer, and in the New York City mayor’s office before coming home in 2016.

Warren County is perhaps most famous for giving birth to the American environmental justice movement. In the early 1980s, people in Warren County resisted state government plans to dump 6,000 truckloads of soil contaminated with toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in a local landfill in a predominantly African American community. 

Despite its significant contribution to the environmental justice movement, many residents of Warren County still lack access to high-speed internet, a critical resource in today’s digital age. This ongoing gap highlights the persistent inequalities faced by rural and marginalized communities, as they continue to grapple with the digital divide that hampers economic opportunities, access to information, education, and overall quality of life in the 21st century.

“The county has been doing a number of things over the years to try and find a solution for the very large number of uncovered, unserved—not just underserved but unserved—residents in our community,” Duncan said. “That has shifted in the last couple years because of all the federal funding that’s coming out.”

Sources from the Brookings Institute to the New York Times cite broadband funding as the most transformative investment in rural America since rural electrification nearly a century ago. “This is definitely a level of investment in infrastructure that we have not seen before,” Duncan said.

Warren County has received multiple broadband funding awards from the federal government, often passed through the state of North Carolina. Programs include the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund through the Federal Communication Commission, the Growing Rural Economic with Access to Technology (GREAT) grant program, the Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) grant and a USDA ReConnect grant of $17.5 million to southern Warren County and Halifax County, including Haliwa-Saponi Tribal areas. 

The company AccessOn Networks received the USDA ReConnect funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which allocated $65 billion to enhance broadband connectivity efforts in communities across the nation. Additionally, the American Rescue Plan Act provided $10 billion in broadband funds to places like Warren County, ensuring that underserved and rural communities gain access to reliable high-speed internet, which is crucial for economic recovery and future resilience.

Each rollout supports new digital workers and more efficient farming through GPS technology. It allows people to attend virtual doctors’ visits,communicate with faraway loved ones and opens up markets and opportunities for businesses.

Warren County has almost 19,000 residents but not a single town with a population over 1,000. Less than 2,000 people live in the three incorporated communities. 

“We have lots of little pockets of community density,” Duncan said. What Warren County doesn’t have is the population density to make broadband infrastructure pay for itself without help.

“Providers aren’t rolling out service in rural areas without being subsidized,” Duncan said. “We as a state haven’t made the internet a public utility, and therefore we’re subject to the business models of the private sector. That’s why broadband is such an issue in rural communities. The population density isn’t enough to justify private corporations making a major investment in the infrastructure build-out that they need.”

Local governments don’t have resources to fund this essential infrastructure. “We, the county, couldn’t fund enough to incentivize the buildout on our own,” Duncan said. The average cost of providing broadband to a single location in Warren County is $3,600, according to the NC OneMap. 

Federal funding, however, is changing the digital map. “We’ve put in less than a million to leverage millions put into our community,” Duncan continued.

People in Warren County are keeping a close eye on each broadband expansion, because service to their home or business could have a big impact on their future. Even if an address isn’t covered by grant funding, Duncan encourages residents to keep contacting providers to request service. 

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021. The $1.9 trillion stimulus package helped fight the pandemic and support families and businesses struggling with its public health and economic impacts, maintain vital public services even amid revenue declines locally, and build a strong, resilient, and equitable recovery by making investments that support long-term growth and opportunity.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), also signed into law by President Biden, provides a historic $1.2 trillion investment to rebuild America’s infrastructure, including a $65 billion allocation specifically for expanding broadband access. This funding aims to ensure every American has access to reliable high-speed internet, particularly in underserved and rural communities, further supporting economic recovery and long-term growth.