CHEROKEE — When people think of high-tech, Silicon Valley, Boston and Research Triangle Park come to mind. Soon, it may be Swain County, leading the list for broadband.

With the completion of the nearly 300-mile BalsamWest fiber-optic network, the six farthest counties of Western North Carolina can boast connectivity better than many major cities.

“Once we get the schools wired the way we want, there will be nothing like this on the planet,” said Phil Drake, founder of Drake Enterprises in Franklin. “I’m hopeful in 10 years Google will say, ‘We should have come to Swain County rather than Caldwell.’”

Drake’s company partnered with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians in 2003, putting $14 million to build a regional network to bring the fastest Internet access to a region that has historically been slow to see new infrastructure such as highways, electricity and water and sewer.
On Friday, about 300 regional leaders marked BalsamWest’s milestone with a celebration at Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel.

Most of the fiber-optic cable was buried in the roughest terrain east of the Rockies. The network extends through Clay, Cherokee, Graham, Jackson and Macon counties and the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The network also extends into adjacent counties in northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee.

With a bandwidth of 1 gigabyte per second, the equivalent to nearly 13,000 simultaneous phone calls, the network is able to transfer tremendous amounts of data at the speed of light.

Soon, Nantahala School, with an average graduating class of fewer than 10, will have the same connectivity as schools in Atlanta. Area hospitals will be able to transfer X-rays and CT scans in seconds rather than drive the images over by courier. Entrepreneurs in Jackson County will be on the same footing as businesses in New York, Beijing or anywhere in the world.

“Students will have a window to the world,” said Cecil Groves, president of Southwestern Community College.

“You have a backbone for the 21st century,” marveled Mark Perkell, a Vermont consultant and vice president of the Rural Telecommunications Congress. “Hands down, best in class is right here. Now it’s time to showcase it. This is what communities should be doing across the country.”