South Carolina Nears End of Digital Divide

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) announced that broadband deployment is continuing at a rapid pace and, while construction is still underway statewide, only 28,724 Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) remain unserved or underserved and lack an investment commitment. Of the remaining BSLs, 21,466 are residential, 5,469 are business, and 1,789 are Community Anchor Institutions. These totals represent 1.1% and 2.9% of the statewide residential and business BSLs, respectively. The next round of federal broadband funding—Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD), administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—will be used to provide access for these locations and permanently solve the digital divide. South Carolina has been allocated $546.5 million in additional BEAD funding. Before the BEAD Main Application phase commences, the SCBBO will continue to redeploy small amounts of the state’s original $400 million American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from under-budget projects to reduce the remaining BSLs that will require BEAD funding. Using this strategy allows remaining BSLs to be connected more rapidly. This strategy has been enabled by the SCBBO’s agile methodology, a building-blocks approach — i.e., investing ARPA funds in multiple tranches, with relatively short construction projects (less than two years), to a wide variety of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) working in parallel. As ISPs complete ARPA projects and come in under budget, the SCBBO follows NTIA-approved protocol and removes BSLs from BEAD eligibility. In the near future, the BEAD Main Application phase will open, and the SCBBO will award projects to connect the remaining unserved and underserved BSLs. These Pre-Qualified Applicants are now eligible to participate in the South Carolina BEAD program.