Five years have passed since a North Carolina-based internet service provider placed the winning bid to install broadband in Mecklenburg, Halifax and Brunswick counties.Since then, more than 3,700 locations in those three counties have waited for high-speed internet, with no work apparent on the project. But the Federal Communications Commission late last month finalized a move that gives residents and local officials hope for connectivity.The FCC granted RiverStreet Networks’ request for another provider, Empower Broadband Inc., to take over the work. Empower is a subsidiary of the Chase City-based Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative, which supplies power to the counties in question.RiverStreet, Empower and others participated in the July 2019 Connect America Fund Phase II Auction, set up to help provide internet access to unserved areas. The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau authorized RiverStreet to receive $32.1 million to build internet to 13,518 locations — residences, businesses and such community buildings as public safety headquarters, schools, libraries and community centers. At least $8.1 million in Connect America Fund money was meant for 3,757 sites in Mecklenburg, Halifax and Brunswick, according to FCC documents. Empower won authorization to receive $1.8 million to serve 838 places elsewhere.Casey Logan, CEO of the Mecklenburg co-op and Empower, said he and his organization watched for five years, unable to help in their home county or the neighboring ones. The Connect America funding does not provide internet for the entire region, as multiple companies typically provide service in each county, but the auction was meant to spark broadband builds in areas that remain with weak or no service.The three counties joined forces last August to file a complaint with the FCC about the lack of work, according to the News & Record of South Boston and The Mecklenburg Sun.“We were hearing the struggles that the residents were having with the RiverStreet inaction,” Logan said Wednesday. “The counties were able to finally convince RiverStreet that … they needed to do something … at least transfer these blocks and allow an entity like Empower to come in and do the work, so their communities can be served.”On this FCC map, the areas in green show where work is being done with money from the Connect America Fund, Phase II. They include Halifax, Mecklenburg and Brunswick counties, where RiverStreet Networks did not begin broadband deployment as required. Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative subsidiary Empower Broadband Inc. will take on the work.Under its bid terms, RiverStreet was required to have served 40% of its locations by Dec. 31, 2022; 60% a year after that; and 80% by the end of 2024. By August 2023, it had served no location in any of the three counties, Halifax County Administrator Scott Simpson told the Mecklenburg County newspapers.RiverStreet, by FCC rules, was in jeopardy of having the Wireline Competition Bureau take back money the bureau had already disbursed.Neither Simpson nor Brunswick County Administrator Leslie Weddington returned multiple messages requesting comment for this story. Mecklenburg County Administrator Alex Gottschalk, who has been in the job since March, confirmed that the counties had complained to the FCC. He said it was his understanding that afterward, neither he nor his predecessor received any communication from RiverStreet.A RiverStreet spokesman on Wednesday took questions via email for company CEO Eric Cramer and others, but they had not answered by 7 p.m. Thursday.The Wireline Competition Bureau issued a public notice in May, requesting comment on the proposed change in service providers. According to the notice, RiverStreet claimed that “supply chain delays resulting from the global pandemic” had “severely impeded” its ability to acquire equipment necessary for the build.The same document noted that the counties called RiverStreet’s claim “dubious,” adding that the more reasonable conclusion was that RiverStreet’s “own internal business decisions in setting priorities for the use of its resources contributed, perhaps significantly, to its inability” to meet the obligations.Logan, the Empower CEO, said that his company had experienced no such logistics issues.“Pre-pandemic and then through the pandemic up to the current date, Empower and Mecklenburg Electrical offices have seen zero delays in receiving materials to perform the work that we were obligated and the responsibilities we took on to serve,” Logan said.The two companies agreed in April that RiverStreet would assign its auction obligations in Mecklenburg and Halifax counties, and in the portion of Brunswick County south of U.S. 58, to Empower, which will receive the $8.1 million federal award originally meant for RiverStreet to support building broadband there. RiverStreet agreed to pay whatever money it had received to date from the fund, a total that was not immediately available Thursday.Under FCC rules, no other company can provide service in an area where a company already has a working bid.“Once we found out that they would be willing to transfer, we knew what it meant to the community,” Logan said. “Plain and simple, we knew our community was waiting. They’ve been waiting for five years to get internet access, and nobody was doing anything.”“We’re very thrilled that the parties were able to come to an arrangement to provide that transfer and to allow a large measure of citizens here in Mecklenburg County to have the potential to receive broadband internet, which they deserve … just the same as the rest of the county,” said Gottschalk, the county administrator.RiverStreet is using Connect America funds in Franklin, Campbell, Pittsylvania, Dinwiddie, Charlotte, Amelia and King and Queen counties, according to its website and county web pages. In 2020, RiverStreet received a federal award to install broadband in Bedford County, and it hosted an event in Huddleston where it said it would have a project done there in six years, county board of supervisors Chairman Edgar Tuck remembered. “Nothing happened,” Tuck said. “There was nothing going on, and because their entire footprint that they were awarded [was] in my district, I thought they were going to be ahead of the game, but they weren’t.”The ISP returned in 2022, working with the West Piedmont Planning District on an $87 million project with the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative, or VATI, that also included Franklin County and Campbell County.“The planning district had reached out to us about participating,” Tuck said. “I wasn’t confident that [RiverStreet] would be awarded those VATI funds, and I was quite surprised when they were.”At one point a few years ago, Tuck called the company out in a supervisors meeting.“I said, how many years had it been since I sat in the press conference … and I wasn’t going to shield them anymore from an angry public and that if we didn’t start seeing some work happen, I’ll be handing out personal cellphone numbers. So, I think they heard the message loud and clear, and we’ve been quick to try to help them wherever we could to expedite it.”Construction started in March and is scheduled for completion in September 2025, according to the Bedford County Broadband Initiative website. It will serve about 3,500 locations. Over the past year, RiverStreet’s work has been good, and the project is moving, he said. He received a text on Thursday from a resident who has been waiting for years for the service. She told him that she watched workers do “a nice job” running cable underground in front of her house.“Once they’ve gotten started in earnest, they have been a pretty good partner so far,” Tuck said. “I mean, they, they’re doing a nice job.”RiverStreet, based in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, has had at least one issue in its home state, according to an FCC document. The company placed another successful Connect America bid in 2019 and was to receive about $680,000 to serve 368 sites in North Carolina over 10 years. RiverStreet informed the bureau in March that it was defaulting on 234 of them.The FCC notified its funds administrator to stop payments and moved to recover money already paid, then notified other agencies that those census blocks were eligible for other funding to get broadband access.Logan, the Empower executive, said he was glad that his company was able to pick up the work that RiverStreet left.“We didn’t give up on our communities,” he said. “We went into the broadband business at Mecklenburg and Empower because nobody else was coming in to serve. It’s a similar story to all rural Virginia … a lot of the electric cooperatives started to step up and create our [broadband] subsidiaries to serve these areas … and now we can serve those homes and keep our communities growing.”The post Residents in 3 Southside counties may soon get internet after a 5-year wait appeared first on Cardinal News.First published by Cardinal News.