Last of unconnected South Carolinians could come online with ‘anchor leg’ plan for broadband

This story was originally published by the South Carolina Daily Gazette.

COLUMBIA — The state Broadband Office is preparing to hook into the information superhighway the last remaining South Carolina homes and businesses without high-speed internet access.

The public has until just before midnight Friday to comment on the state’s plan, which state broadband chief Jim Stritzinger called “the anchor leg of the broadband investment relay race here in South Carolina.” The office will then submit for final approval the plan for spending its share of a $42 billion federal grant program.

The milestone is one to celebrate. The final round will complete an effort that began in 2020.

By the 2030 deadline, the combined public-private effort will have connected more than 200,000 locations statewide, Stritzinger said in a statement.

Still, how the state plans to link up about half of its final locations raises concerns about affordability and reliability, some broadband groups say.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of broadband and the state’s digital divide. Without high-speed internet, people couldn’t work or attend classes amid closures. In rural areas where healthcare access is thin, patients are increasingly turning to virtual visits with doctors. But being diagnosed by a physician over a video call is nearly impossible without a good connection.

Legislators recognized broadband was a critical need, not a luxury.

In response, they designated $490 million over two years toward extending access statewide, the bulk of it from federal COVID aid packages. The biggest single chunk — $400 million approved in May 2022 — came from the $2.5 billion that flowed to state coffers from the American Rescue Plan Act.

With that $400 million, combined with $263 million in private investment, state-contracted companies added high-speed internet access to more than 117,000 homes, businesses and community buildings, such as schools and libraries.

When that money ran dry last year, there were about 20,480 locations still without a connection, according to the latest data from the state Broadband Office — down from an earlier estimate of about 32,000.

Infrastructure Funds for Broadband

The state then turned its attention to a federal grant program — Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) — funded through the federal Infrastructure Investment spending package passed by Congress in November 2021.

That program, pushed by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., brought $551.5 million into the state, but under the final plan up for review, the state says it needs only a fraction — 7.5% — of it.

According to the Broadband Office, which the Legislature officially created in 2021, the state’s early investments of pandemic relief funds toward broadband, starting with $50 million in June 2020, provided a head start. Private companies also have expanded their service areas and made investments that helped fill in gaps.

What will become of the remaining funds is unknown.

States were supposed to be allowed to use leftover funds to pay for things other than broadband deployment. But the federal telecommunications agency has not yet released guidance since the Trump administration revised the rules in June.

“There’s a lot of fear right now that (the National Telecommunications and Information Administration) may try to call that money back, which would be a big shame,” Drew Garner, the director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute for Broadband in the Chicago area, told States Newsroom affiliate Stateline.

South Carolina is far from the only state with a potential surplus:

• In Oklahoma, critics noticed the updated plan would not be using $225 million of the state’s allocated funds.
• In Nevada, that number is nearly $250 million.
• Arizona — $481 million left over
• Kentucky — $623 million
• Mississippi — $633 million
• Louisiana — $750 million
• North Carolina — $1 billion

And the list goes on, according to the Benton Institute, which has been tracking these plans.

Most of the state plans do not mention how they would like to spend the remaining funds.

But Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, in a letter sent earlier this month, asked the U.S. Department of Commerce, which administers the program, to allow states to spend it on artificial intelligence efforts and education and workforce initiatives. Louisiana also previously sought to spend the funds on rural healthcare.

Program Changes

The program changes implemented by the Trump administration, which put a focus on driving down costs as much as possible, also has led to other shifts, said Alex Karras, a researcher with the Broadband Expanded project at New York Law School.

Namely, more states have turned to satellite internet companies that cost less to build but tend to have more uneven service than underground fiber optic cable, favored for its speed and durability.

That includes Elon Musk’s Starlink, which states could award about $10 billion worth of projects nationwide, according to The Wall Street Journal. There’s also Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which has yet to start service as it has struggled to get satellites into space, the Journal also reported.

Under South Carolina’s state plan, the two tech giants are in line for $7.9 million worth of contracts, covering 49% of the remaining unserved homes and businesses. While these locations are scattered across the state, there are clusters in the rural areas surrounding Greenville, Columbia, Florence and Orangeburg, as well as Cherokee, Darlington, and Hampton counties, that will rely on the satellites for service, according to a map put out by the Broadband Office.

While not as fast as fiber-optic cables, the satellites could reach parts of the state where installing cables is difficult, Stritzinger has previously said.

And though satellite internet makes up a large chunk of this latest investment round, it accounts for less than 1% of the locations where the state has worked to add service, according to the Broadband Office.

Whether satellite internet technology will be able to consistently meet the minimum speed requirements under the federal program remains in question. In a Starlink test program, only 17.4% of users were getting high enough speeds over the first three months of 2025, according to an analysis by Ookla, a company that measures internet speeds.

However, the analysis noted, the company’s speeds have increased significantly over the past several years. The challenge will be maintaining that speed as the company adds more customers.

“If four out of five subscribers aren’t getting broadband speeds today, what do people think is going to happen when you add in hundreds of thousands of new users?” Sascha Meinrath, a professor at Penn State and co-author of a recent study questioning whether Starlink, the internet division of SpaceX, can meet the program’s requirements, told Spotlight Pennsylvania.

Also under the program rule changes, while internet providers must still offer low-cost residential service options, states no longer have the power to dictate the rates.

Amazon has yet to publicize the rates it plans to charge when its satellite system is operational. In the test program, Starlink gave free equipment, valued at $350, to each user who agreed to sign up for a one-year plan that cost $120 per month for higher speeds and $80 per month for lower ones.

A grant program offering low-income families a $100 discount to buy equipment and a $30 monthly discount on their internet bill ended last year without additional funding from Congress.

Remaining Locations

While states have been finalizing their plans this month, rollout of the BEAD program was delayed after the Trump administration asked states to recheck their list of unserved locations to search for duplications and other unnecessary service areas.

For South Carolina, that proved to be a useful exercise. The state found about 12,000 locations that no longer needed service, according to Broadband Expanded.

The vast majority of those — about 6,790 locations — already received service via high-speed fiber installed during other projects funded by COVID relief dollars or a state-funded grant program.

Another 3,370 locations already had privately funded internet access. And about 1,800 were mistakes and duplications on the map.

A smaller portion of the locations were found to be structures that didn’t actually need service — garages, barns, grain silos, demolished or uninhabitable buildings.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.