North Carolina lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a statewide broadband mapping project that shows 92 percent of households have broadband access already. The map, created by a telecom consortium called Connected Nation, includes data from 35 Internet service providers. It shows that faster Internet speeds are spotty in the state's western and eastern regions and along the state's northern rim. Areas limited to slow dial-up connection speeds are seen as increasingly behind in competing for new businesses and in job creation. The map also shows areas with Wi-Fi access and mobile high-speed access. The online feature can zero in on neighborhood blocks and is searchable by home address. The project has been a year in the making as competing telecoms sought guarantees from Connected Nation that the precise location of equipment and other sensitive information would remain confidential. In past years, the Internet service providers had reluctantly provided information to the e-NC Authority, an agency established in this state in 2000 to track Internet access. But after the industry created Connected Nation, many telecoms stopped providing data to e-NC.
