February 2023

Lumen’s Fiber Path Forward

Lumen is taking a different path forward than the other big telephone companies. The company announced a major upgrade to its long-haul fiber routes that cross the country. The company’s main fiber strategy is to beef up the intercity network with plans to add six million miles of fiber to existing fiber routes by 2026. The existing Lumen long-haul fiber network came to the company in two acquisitions. The original network came when CenturyLink bought US West, which had earlier merged with Qwest, a major builder of long-haul networks.

South Carolina Broadband Office Announces $132.8 Million ARPA Investment

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) announced 56 newly funded projects through its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Priority 1.0 (ARPA SLFRF 1.0) grant program. For this round of investments, the SCBBO committed $132,799,403 to 15 broadband providers in 33 counties.  The total project cost for this round of broadband expansion is estimated to be $256,755,322.

Connect Alabama Gets Help From Capital Projects Fund

As of 2021, roughly 13 percent of Alabama’s 1.65 million addresses were unserved by broadband of at least 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3), while about 19 percent of addresses were unserved by 100/20 service—the threshold recommended as the state’s five-year target to align with new federal funding opportunities. Higher-speed services like 100/100 and symmetrical 1 Gbps were available only to about 25 percent of addresses.