Update: In a related story, Gov. Sanford announced on the morning of Sept. 16 the formation of a Broadband Advisory Committee charged with prioritizing requests for federal broadband infrastructure stimulus funds.

During the hardscrabble blood and violence time of the Great Depression, a state-owned utility in South Carolina stretched out electrical wires to light up even the darkest corners of the state. People who could only dream of having power finally had it, the lights turning on for them for the first time.

Now, nearly 80 years later, the Palmetto State has an opportunity to do something similarly transformational.

Instead of electricity, proponents of statewide public broadband spectrum say this time it could be the Internet that illuminates those parts of the state still lingering in the digital dark ages. 

South Carolina is the only state in the nation that owns all of the state’s federal licenses to educational broadcasting spectrum, and state taxpayers have funded an expansive network of educational broadcasting infrastructure.

“South Carolina is uniquely positioned to be number one in something good in the nation,” says Brett Bursey, director of the South Carolina Progressive Network. “We could be the first state with statewide broadband.”

A state legislative subcommittee plans to reconvene Thursday at 11 a.m. to discuss contract issues related to use of the spectrum.

An advocate of narrowing the digital divide, Bursey and the Progressive Network have been pushing hard for South Carolina to retain control of 25 percent of the spectrum for public use.

Federal licensing of broadcast spectrum, specifically for educational purposes, dates back to 1962, five years after the former Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite, spurring the United States to action to improve its educational system, according to Sascha Meinrath, director of the “open technology initiative” at the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation. Meinrath recounts the history in an Aug. 29 story in the Orangeburg Times and Democrat.

Advocates of public statewide broadband hope that one thing the Sept. 17 meeting accomplishes is a way to find out what the state’s existing spectrum is worth and what could be done with it.

So far, no entity has conducted a study on what the state’s needs are regarding the broadband spectrum, Bursey says.

Establishing free statewide public broadband isn’t without its challenges.

“The problem is that politics, greed and shortsighted politicians are a bigger barrier than the technical barriers,” says Phil Noble, president of the South Carolina New Democrats.

Indeed, private telecommunications companies armed with corporate lobbyists have allied themselves with leaders in the General Assembly and are vying for privatization of the spectrum.

The New Democrats, an independent reform group, lists obtaining universal wireless broadband for every family in South Carolina as one of its five big ideas for the 21st century.

Noble also has been pushing an initiative to provide a $100 laptop to every school child in the state. “The laptops are like a race car to educational improvement,” Noble says.
“Broadband would be supercharged fuel.”

Regardless of what the subcommittee decides, the ultimate outcome will be up to the State Budget and Control Board.

“South Carolina is uniquely positioned as the only state in our nation where the public owns 100 percent coverage of a broadband spectrum across the state,” Bursey says. “What are we going to do with it? The opportunities are phenomenal.”