GREAT Grant (State)

The N.C. Department of Information Technology’s Broadband Infrastructure Office, as authorized under S.L. 2018-5 and amended by S.L. 2019-230 and S.L. 2020-97, provides state-funded grants to private providers of broadband services to facilitate the deployment of broadband service to unserved areas of North Carolina.

The Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) Program funds the terrestrial deployment of broadband within unserved areas of economically distressed counties. 

The grants help bring high-speed internet to thousands of North Carolinians, businesses and farms in the most rural and remote areas of the state. These areas include both Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties as well as rural census tracts located in development Tier 3 areas that are currently served by less than 25 megabytes per second download and 3 megabytes per second upload speeds. Learn about county tier designations.

These state-funded grants are available to private broadband service providers and are designed to connect these areas with broadband as quickly as possible.