Brightspeed Completes South Carolina Network That Received State Broadband Funding

Broadband provider Brightspeed has completed a network deployment in Eutawville, South Carolina, that was funded, in part, through the South Carolina 2021 Rural Broadband Grant Program. The network provides service to more than 3,000 addresses in the town and the surrounding Orangeburg County area. The network is capable of 940 Mbps data speeds. Brightspeed invested half of the cost of the build. Brightspeed has bigger plans for South Carolina moving forward. In August, 2022, the company said that it would deploy a fiber network to 50,000 addresses in the state. The first phase would include 14,000 addresses and was scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. The balance of 36,000 addresses would be completed in subsequent years. The technology used in Eutawville apparently is different from what Brightspeed has planned for the 50,000 additional locations. Those projects are to include XGS-PON platforms capable of symmetrical data speeds of more than 1 Gbps, which is faster than what is specified for the Eutwawville build.