Focus Broadband

Focus Broadband (stylized as FOCUS Broadband), formerly Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation (ATMC), is a member-owned, non-profit cooperative that provides telecommunications services in southeastern North Carolina. It is the largest member-owned cooperative in North Carolina and one of the largest in the United States.

History

ATMC was founded in 1955 by citizens of Brunswick County who were without telephone service^[1] and was the tenth such cooperative organized in North Carolina.^[2] Using a $381,000 loan from the Rural Electrification Administration, many rural sections of the county received modern phone service for the first time.^[3] It added cable television service in the 1980s, becoming the first co-op in the state to provide TV to its members,^[4] and Internet in the 1990s.^[5] After receiving an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, it expanded into parts of Columbus County in 2011;^[1] in 2019, the company obtained a new $25 million grant to lay fiber-optic cables to connect rural areas of that County.^[5]

In December 2021, ATMC announced it would change its name to Focus Broadband, reflecting a new emphasis on broadband as its primary service offering.^[6]