While residents of Sandy Mush in northwest Buncombe County can’t get on the high-speed digital highway at all, nearly 100 percent of their neighbors in Yancey County can get up to 100 megabit-per-second Internet directly to their homes, and the service is now being extended to the adjacent Mitchell County. A five-year, $25.2 million project has put these areas squarely on the map, giving businesses and residents the fastest countywide service in the state, according to North Carolina’s Office of Digital Infrastructure.
Asked what made the innovative project possible, given the challenges these rural areas typically face, Wanda Proffitt says, “I call it teamwork.”
Proffitt, the director of Yancey County’s Economic Development Commission, attributes the project’s success to the vision of Yancey native Ray Miller. He founded Country Cablevision, based in the county’s remote Pensacola community, Proffitt explains. Miller, who’s developed many digital companies around the country, “saw the future and wanted to bring it to his hometown and community,” she says.
A 2009 task force helped pull Miller’s idea together and led to Country Cablevision teaming up with the EDC, the local chamber of commerce, Burnsville town leaders and others. Through that partnership, the project got federal stimulus funding via the Broadband Initiatives Program: an $18.6 million grant and a $6.6 million loan to the cable company. “There’s no way a private company could do it alone,” says Proffitt, likening to project to the federal programs that got electricity and phone service to rural Americans decades earlier.
The new service, which got rolling in March of 2014, connects schools, libraries, local government offices, businesses and residents. Yancey County’s new tech center, for example, has 100 Mbps download and upload capacity — for free. Residents and businesses have a choice of various tiered commercial services.
Dean Russell, the project manager at Country Cablevision, says the service uses state-of-the-art fiber optics and is within reach of even the most remote home or business. “If you live in Yancey or Mitchell, we will serve you,” he says.
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