Orangeburg County, South Carolina, received $18.65 million in broadband stimulus funds for high-speed broadband (which we previously noted). Unfortunately, AT&T and its friends at ALEC have since pushed through a state law to limit local authority in building networks.

According to the Broadband Adoption Map from the Investigative Reporting Workshop of the American University School of Communication, Orangeburg County has a broadband adoption rate of 20-40% as compared to the national rate of 60%.

Not only has AT&T refused to invest in modern networks in much of South Carolina, it is not even bothering to accept a federal subsidy that would underwrite some of that cost. Which is actually good for the rest of us, because subsidizing any AT&T activities is a very poor use of taxpayer dollars.

But Orangeburg is moving forward on its own. The Orangeburg County Council approved a $2.4 million contract with Edwards Telecommunications to complete the third phase of their project. This phase alone will use 171 miles of fiber and add 902 households to the network. Two more phases are scheduled before the entire project is complete.

According to a Gene Zaleski Times and Democrat article:

Seventy-five percent of the project will be paid for with a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service grant and the remaining 25 percent will be paid for with proceeds from the Orangeburg County capital project sales tax.

In 2010, after receiving the award, the County expressed their optimism in a Phil Sarta article in the Times Democrat:

[County Administrator Bill] Clark said broadband capability will be extended to 3,700-3,800 households and roughly 90 businesses. The project area includes...

South Carolina's H3508 has passed the legislature, been signed by Governor Nikki R. Haley, and has revoked local authority to build the broadband networks they need to create new jobs. Last week, we noted some of the coverage about the bill.

After reviewing the language of the bill, we are astonished at how far the Governor and the South Carolina Legislature have gone to protect AT&T's monopoly, to the detriment of the many businesses and citizens who desperately need better access to the Internet -- whether to be more productive, competitive, or just take advantage of educational opportunities.

South Carolina is near the bottom of adoption rate in the U.S. and has a higher than average number of residents living below the poverty line. Communities with fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet are seeing new jobs. Those stuck on slow DSL are watching jobs wither away.

We continue to be amazed at state legislatures that are prioritizing laws to make it harder to expand broadband rather than easier. The only explanation is the vast amounts of money big companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable spend in campaign contributions.

This bill is designed to prevent local governments from building next-generation networks, even when the private sector has refused to invest. It may also put an end to projects already in the works (even those that have received BTOP or BIP funding).

H3508 is not an outright ban against municipal networks, but it might as well be. South Carolina had already discouraged community broadband networks in Article 23, Chapter 9, Title 58 of its 1976 Code. This bill ramps up the unfavorable...

Yesterday the South Carolina Senate voted in a second reading of H 3508, a bill that has been debated in the State Legislature since it was introduced in January of 2011. The bill, pushed by AT&T and ALEC, has been on our radar for quite some time.

We have watched this piece of legislation because it will have immediate and unfortunate negative implications for the people of South Carolina. Right now, the state has a miserable adoption rate with an average of 53 out of 100 households connected. Like many other states in the South, poverty, geography, and lack of interest from the major carriers have left South Carolina behind the rest of the country.

The bill will revoke local authority to pick up the slack where the private industry has failed. If this bill passes, South Carolina will entrust its future to AT&T, which has admitted it has no solution for rural broadband. And in the meantime, it is ripping off our schools and libraries, as revealed in a recent ProPublica article examining E-rate Program.

If you live in South Carolina, call your elected officials and let them know you are a constituent and you believe communities should make these decisions locally.

Find your legislator here. Tell them to oppose H.3508 and any efforts to limit local authority to make decisions about broadband.

The Heartland Institute is one of those organizations that will say anything its massive corporate funders want it to. It is embroiled in a scandal from the release of internal documents due to its work challenging the science behind climate change.

In the telecom space, Heartland's employees have encouraged laws to take decision-making authority away from communities in order to benefit the massive cable and DSL companies (like Heartland-funder AT&T).

They advocate for efforts like Georgia's SB 313 and South Carolina's H3508, saying:

1. Muni networks are doomed to failure because of the general incompetence of government
2. Muni networks will drive private sector providers out of the market because governments are too all powerful and have too many advantages in competition

This is why we see bills that are supposed to "level the playing field" pushed by big companies like Time Warner Cable in North Carolina last year.

If you take a gander at Heartland's telecom work, you have to wonder why the playing field needs to be leveled if they believe what they have written:

A municipal government cannot possibly hope to compete with well-capitalized broadband providers in a highly competitive market.

For those unfamiliar with Heartland, they don't use the same definitions for common words like "competitive" as the rest of us do. In Heartland's world, "competitive" means a market in which one of our funders operates regardless of how much competition exists in it.

So why do we need new legislation to make it even harder for communities to build the networks that the cable and DSL companies won't build?