North Carolina Renews Commitment to Statewide Connectivity

North Carolina took another step toward improving technology-based economic opportunity for its citizens when Gov. Michael Easley signed into law House Bill 1194 earlier this month. The bill creates the e-NC Authority, which will continue the work of the existing Rural Internet Access Authority for three more years, beginning January 2004.

Since 2001, the current authority has led efforts to connect North Carolina, especially rural areas, to the Internet. The Rural Internet Access Authority estimates 2002 – a year when the authority helped drive a 20 percent increase in computer ownership – marked the biggest deployment year the state has ever had. High-speed Internet access was available to 75 percent of North Carolina households by the end of 2002, the authority states.

The e-NC Authority will be a unique hybrid organization that is funded through private and federal dollars and operated out of a private nonprofit. The newly created state authority will build off the existing authority's work, safeguard its financial and programmatic investments across the state, provide continued leadership for technology-based economic development, and expand the role of this central planning body for the state’s Internet access policy.

Key differences between the old and new authorities are the inclusion of distressed urban areas and the use of the Federal Communications Commission definition of high-speed going forward. The FCC currently defines high-speed as the ability to receive 200 kilobits of data or more per second.

More information on e-NC Authority is available at http://www.e-nc.org/.