WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, President Biden and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the official state-by-state allocation of $45 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funds through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. In this process, South Carolina was allocated $551,535,983.05.
Jim Stritzinger, Director of the SC Broadband Office (SCBBO), attended the White House ceremony with broadband leaders from around the U.S. and commented, “Today was a historic event, and we are incredibly grateful for the additional resources to expand our workforce and deliver high-speed internet access to even more homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions throughout South Carolina.”
While BEAD money has now been allocated, the SCBBO still has significant NTIA planning and approval steps, which must be completed before funds can be committed to actual projects. Therefore, the SCBBO does not currently anticipate that any funds will be deployed until 2025.
According to the guidelines of the BEAD program, money allocated to the state must be utilized for workforce-oriented programs, in addition to physical infrastructure for skills such as telecommunications deployment, cybersecurity, GIS, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing.
In addition to the BEAD allocation, the SCBBO is also pleased to announce that it has updated its statewide maps to reflect the progress that has been made through previous funding and grant opportunities through March 31, 2023. The most up-to-date information and statistics by county are available via SCDigitalDrive.org.
The new March 31, 2023, map set is now based on location-level information from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Broadband Service Location (BSL) fabric and focuses on underserved homes (those with less than 100 Mbps download / 20 Mbps upload service) in South Carolina.
As of March 31, 2023, there are 191,548 underserved BSLs (impacting 394,419 residents) in the State of South Carolina; however, when construction on currently funded projects completes, the number of underserved BSLs will fall to 133,631 by December 2024.
Statewide, over 1.9 million residents (~76%) now subscribe to high-speed internet and 48,677 adopted fiber in their homes over the last six months.
As for affordability, 324,332 households have qualified for the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that provides a $30/month subsidy for broadband service. As a result, 61,715 new ACP households have signed up in the last six months.
More information can be found at ors.sc.gov/broadband.
The SCBBO is housed within the state’s Office of Regulatory Staff. It serves as the central broadband planning body to coordinate with federal, state, regional, local, and private entities, to the extent practicable, to engage in the continued deployment of broadband in the state.