Open Source: 900,000 NC households to soon lose help paying for their internet

I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

During his visit to Raleigh last month, President Joe Biden touted a federal program that’s on the verge of disappearing. Since 2022, the Affordable Connectivity Program has given low-income households $30 a month to pay for high-speed internet. Participants could also use a one-time $100 discount to buy laptops or desktops.

The ACP was created under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021. To be eligible, a household’s income must be at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines or be participating in another federal assistance program like Medicaid or SNAP.

But yesterday, the ACP stopped accepting new enrollments. And current recipients only have a few more months.

“Barring additional funding from Congress, April is expected to be the last month enrolled households will receive the full benefit,” the program’s website says.

More than 898,000 households in North Carolina are enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program. This includes 54,500 households in Wake County, 24,340 in Durham, 7,200 in Orange, and 77,600 in Mecklenburg. But also 8,000 households in rural Vance County.

“The Affordable Connectivity Program has helped thousands North Carolina families not have to decide between affording high-speed internet service or other daily necessities,” Nate Denny, the N.C. Department of Information Technology deputy secretary for broadband and digital equity said in an email.

According to NCDIT, around 1.1 million North Carolina homes can’t access high-speed internet due to finances, connectivity infrastructure, or because they don’t know how to use it.

Ahead of Biden’s visit, Gov. Roy Cooper urged Congress to pass the Affordable Connectivity Extension Act, which would direct $7 billion to keep the program afloat. In September, Cooper wrote North Carolina’s congressional delegation about the funding. Then in November, he and Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox advocated for ACP in a letter to top congressional leaders.

The Cooper/Cox letter was cosigned by 23 other governors, mostly Democrats.

“Closing our nation’s digital divide transcends politics,” it read.

Onto the rest of this week’s news:

VinFast goes vertical?

The electric carmaker said this week it is making “significant progress” on its Chatham County site.

“Following the completion of site grading in 2023, we have now commenced various vital infrastructure works and significant progress has been made across all major areas, such as the General Assembly Shop,” VinFast’s global communications team wrote in an email. “The concrete columns, a foundational element at GA Shop are already taking shape.”

VinFast hopes to open its $2 billion assembly facility in 2025. It would be the first big auto plant in North Carolina history. As part of a purchase option agreement with the state, VinFast was supposed to have begun vertical construction at the site by Jan. 1.

In early January, the N&O took aerial drone photos of the Chatham site, which is about 30 miles southwest of downtown Raleigh. Any substantial structure work isn’t easily apparent in the images.

Five signs Novo Nordisk will expand in Johnston County

With 2,200 local workers, Novo Nordisk is among the largest employers in Johnston County. This week, I looked at several signs the company could soon grow its Clayton facility:

• The drugmaker behind the wildly popular weight loss shots Wegovy and Ozempic says it’s looking to increase its “industrial footprint” to meet demand.

• Throughout 2023, Novo Nordisk purchased land along the same road as its exiting facility.

• Novo Nordisk applied to rezone about 117 acres of its new land from agricultural to industrial use. A company spokesperson told me it did this “to determine suitability for potential construction.”

• In September 2022, Johnston County commissioners approved a 12-year economic incentive to entice Novo Nordisk to expand locally. At the time, the county’s economic development director said it was “Novo Nordisk’s desire to invest within their existing campus on Powhatan Road in Clayton.”

• On Monday, the Triangle Business Journal (which has been tracking the company’s land acquisitions) cited three separate unnamed sources who said Novo Nordisk could announce a multibillion-dollar investment in Johnston as soon as this spring.

2024: Tough year for layoffs

U.S. layoffs were markedly up last month. North Carolina was not an exception.

So far this year, 1,160 workers in the state have been affected by mass layoffs, according to WARN Notice filings. In comparison, there were 610 cuts at this point last year. Hanesbrands in Winston-Salem recently announced it’ll eliminate 159 positions. A packaging firm also said it will shutter its Charlotte facility, impacting 112 employees.

Big tech firms (Amazon, Google, Meta) continue to scale back, too. For this, blame interest rates and 2021 overhiring, says Mouhcine Guettabi, an economist at UNC-Wilmington.

“The economy, as a whole, is still growing, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of attention to some of these big, publicly listed companies that are making these adjustments,” he said.

Others say tech employers are shifting their workforce priorities for incoming artificial intelligence.

Short Stuff: Save the banana

Disney’s Epic universe. Disney made its “biggest entry ever into the world of games” this week by taking a $1.5 billion equity stake in Cary’s Epic Games. At Epic’s 2022 valuation, this would make Disney about a 4.8% owner. The two companies described collaborating on a metaverse-esque platform, powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine, to meld Fortnite aesthetics with Disney’s famed properties (Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and legacy Disney).

Banana genes. As a fungus imperils the fate of the world’s most eaten fruit, a Research Triangle startup works to save the banana from extinction.

Almost to the top. Raleigh is the No. 2 best-performing city in the U.S., according to new rankings from the economic think tank Milken Institute. There are way too many city rankings (you should see a journalist’s inbox) but Milken’s annual report appears pretty robust. The City of Oaks landed in the top quartile for all 13 economic indicators. Only Austin, Texas, stands between us and the top spot.

Worker death: 34-year-old Nathan Vanbeek was killed Thursday at the Coca-Cola distribution center in Clayton, the town announced. “After further investigation, it was determined that Vanbeek was removing a heater fan from a wall inside the room and appeared to have been electrocuted during the process,” Town of Clayton spokesperson Nathanael Shelton said in a statement.

Vanbeek was an employee of Stoltz Management Company. He lived in the Johnston County town of Selma, Shelton’s statement said. Both Clayton police and the North Carolina Department of Labor are investing the incident.

Same story: Among other reforms, the U.S. Senate immigration bill proposed this week would enable the children and spouses of H-1B visa holders to more easily work. But its chances of passing appear slim to none.

It’s a familiar story to Triangle-area H-1B legal experts and the visa holders’ families.

“For the longest time, and I’m talking a very long time, people have introduced this and introduced that in Congress, and none of them have gone anywhere,” said Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Global Immigration Law Group in Raleigh.

New Hub. MetLife and the NC Tech industry group will partner to open a technology workforce center at MetLife’s global tech campus in Cary. The center will provide workers and employers “resources, thought leadership, and collaboration.”

National Tech Happenings

• For the first time, the United States imports more goods from Mexico than China.

• The FCC will bar robocalls with AI voices.

• And it’s a good weekend to consider the future of watching live sports. Disney/ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. announced a new joint streaming platform (name and price TBD) for fans that will debut next year.

Thanks for reading!