ONLY ON WWAY: No cable or internet access for some Brunswick County residents

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Nestled away, west of Leland, is a row of homes on Mintz Drive Northeast with no access to the web.

“The 15 or 16 houses that are on this street do not have any type of cable or internet service,” said resident Cathi Mintz.

No Facebook. No Netflix. Nothing.

“There are things that we can’t have in our home. I can’t have an updated security system with all the latest bells and whistles. My kids struggle to take online classes through Cape Fear or through their university, they go to NC State, because it’s unreliable,” said Mintz.

Mintz and her family have lived here for 17 years.

Their home was once in the middle of nowhere, but now everything has built up around them, including private development Compass Pointe, which is right next door.

“I choose not to think it’s because we’re not in a fancy subdivision with a gate, but I don’t understand. In this day and age, we should have internet. We should have it. It’s almost become like electricity,” said Mintz.

Mintz said Spectrum and ATMC told her she wasn’t in their territory.

“When everybody is saying, ‘It’s not us. No, it’s them. No, it’s them. They’re responsible.’ At some point, somebody’s gotta be responsible. We are this little black hole,” said Mintz.

In August, Congressman David Rouzer spoke about the importance of high speed internet, especially in rural areas.

“Broadband access is really, really critical. It’s critical from every standpoint, from personal use to growing businesses and growing the communities,” said Rep. Rouzer.

We reached out to his office to see if he could help.

His spokesperson, Danielle Smotkin said, in part, “Deployment of high speed broadband access to areas in need are one of the initiatives we hope to help acclerate as part of the Trump administration’s major infrastructure proposal that Congress will be working on in the New Year.”

In the meantime, Mintz and her family will remain offline.

An ATMC spokesperson said even though Mintz Drive Northeast is not their area, if everyone who lived there would commit to switching to them, they would do an engineering study to see how much it would cost to run fiber optics to their homes, but it would likely cost $100,000. Even then, homeowners would have to pay something up front.

Spectrum told us they would look into it. We have not heard back.