The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) awarded $71.5 million in rural broadband funding to Lumos and at least one other provider this week. The funding came in the final round of the state’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund 1.0 Grant Program.
The SCBBO also has begun accepting applications for up to $40 million in rural broadband funding through the state’s ARPA SLFRF 3.0 program.
The award to Lumos announced this week was for over $1.2 million to cover some of the costs of bringing high-speed broadband to 700 unserved and underserved locations in Spartanburg County. The company will contribute an additional $800,000 to cover total deployment costs of approximately $2 million.
A total of 16 projects received funding in the ARPA CPF program awards announced this week, the SCBBO said. Some providers may have won funding for more than one project.
Telecompetitor has requested a full list of awardees in this round from the SCBBO and will publish an update whenever we hear back from them.
There is a map on the SCBBO website of providers that have won South Carolina broadband awards through the ARPA CPF program, including awards made in multiple rounds. Among the companies that have won South Carolina broadband funding through the program are:
- AT&T
- Charter
- Comcast
- Comporium
- Farmers
- Home Telephone
- Horry
- Lumos
- Carolina Connect
- Palmetto Rural Telephone
- Sandhill Telephone
- TruVista
- WC Fiber
- ZiTEL
According to an SCBBO press release, the ARPA CPF program has awarded a total of more than $185 million to 15 providers for 34 projects in 41 counties.
South Carolina ARPA SLFRF 3.0
The SCBBO began accepting applications for up to $40 million remaining in the state’s ARPA SLFRF 3.0 program on Monday. The awards will cover some of the costs of deploying broadband in unserved and underserved rural areas.
Interested parties have until March 25 to apply.
South Carolina’s general assembly allocated over $214 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to the ARPA SLFRF program.
Unserved areas are those lacking service at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. Underserved areas are those lacking service at speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Funding recipients must deploy service supporting symmetrical 100 Mbps speeds.
The program prioritizes unserved areas with no current internet service provider, difficult development areas as identified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and census blocks that have a high concentration of unserved public K-12 student households. Additional information can be found at this link.
Additional information about South Carolina broadband, including links to state funding resources and state-specific Telecompetitor coverage, can be found on Telecompetitor’s Broadband Nation page for the state.