196,029
NC Customers
1,041
NC People Employed
54
NC Counties
73
Years Serving Rural NC
Mark Your Calendars for Carolinalink’s North Carolina Broadband & Technology Conference and Exhibitor Showcase – Gigs and Grants 2025 - at the Grandover Resort & Spa in Greensboro, NC, June 25. Register here.
About US
CarolinaLink is a political advocacy group for the North Carolina Broadband Cooperative’s Coalition (NCBCC). NCBCC is made up of the North Carolina’s seven Broadband Membership Cooperatives, who together provide advanced technology services to many of the state’s most rural areas.
Through CarolinaLink these companies advocate for public policy goals which improve the lives of North Carolinians living in rural areas, such as ensuring access to state-of-the-art communications services at reasonable prices, whatever their address.
NC Rural Broadband Cooperatives
What is a Broadband Cooperative?
In 1949, Congress extended the benefits of the Rural Electrification Act to include telephone service. After World World II, North Carolinians living in many areas of the state did not have telephone service because rural areas were sparsely populated and looked like a poor return on investment to the large telephone companies of the day. To avoid being left behind, ordinary citizens from these rural areas banded together to do something extraordinary; they started their own telephone cooperatives. Today, those telephone companies have evolved to become broadband providers, and they are critical to connecting rural North Carolina to the world.