FOCUS Broadband Brings Fiber to Rural North Carolina, Grant by Grant

In the past five years, FOCUS Broadband has gone from deploying fiber connectivity to just two North Carolina counties to eight, nearly doubling its number of customers from 36,000 to 63,000. Approximately two dozen state and federal grants since 2018 has enabled FOCUS Broadband to develop into these new markets, and—in addition to securing more than $120 million in grant funding in that time period—the company invested $30 to $40 million of its own dollars in matches. The end result is the build-out of approximately $150 million worth of grant fiber projects from 2019 through now, and continuing over the next two years. In addition to applying for funding through North Carolina’s Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) grant program, FOCUS has also applied for US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect grants. Prior to becoming "FOCUS Broadband," the company was known as the Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation (ATMC), headquartered in tourist-rich Brunswick County along the Atlantic shoreline. However, in 2019 ATMC started applying for grants and moving into more rural areas to the west.