Abbeville, S.C.-based company introduces new broadband service to Columbia County (Commerce: real estate)

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Though some might find it odd that a 60-year-old South Carolina cooperative is using a public-owned network paid for with Obama administration “stimulus” funds to provide broadband service to metro Augusta’s wealthiest county, Pannu and his family are simply happy to watch Netflix hiccup-free.
“There’s no buffering, basically,” he said of the no-data-limit WCFIBER service.
The unconventional broadband arrangement was born last year after two years of discussions.
Similar to the network lease deals the county has with commercial broadband providers such as Georgia Business Net and Advanced Technology Group, its agreement with WCTEL lets the company provide a “last mile” connection between homeowners and the county’s “middle-mile” public network.
The entire network, known as the Columbia County Community Broadband Utility, was designed to bring broadband to “unserved” and “underserved” areas of the county, which the federal government considers “rural” because it has less than 100 residents per square-mile.
For months the nonprofit cooperative had marketed the service under-the-radar through neighborhood associations, but last week it kicked off a major promotional campaign for WCFIBER that included a ribbon-cutting event at the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce.
Under WCTEL’s residential service agreement, the company leases wholesale network space from the broadband utility and assumes the cost of installing gear in neighborhoods and laying fiber lines to the county’s main “data pipe.”
WCTEL benefits from turnkey access to a ready-made network while the fast-growing county benefits by getting broadband service to homeowners without spending public money building last-mile linkages, which can cost up to $30,000 per mile in rural areas and $60,000 per mile in urbanized regions.
But the most important aspect of the arrangement is economic development, says Lewis Foster, the utility’s general manager. Everybody these days demands high-speed data service, major corporations and rural homesteaders alike.
“People who are moving to the county today expect broadband,” said Foster, one of the utility’s four employees. “They expect it the same as water, sewer or natural gas.”
Without good broadband, even the most attractive new homes can be a tough sell to the modern wired family. Even though 1-gigabit-per-second service, also called 1,000 Mpbs, exceeds the typical consumer’s data demands, real estate agents say many homeowners like the idea of simply having access to such speeds should they ever need them.
“The main thing from our standpoint is just having that option for them,” said Lauressa Richardson, marketing director for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Beazley Realtors. “In the Columbia County area, when you look at the demographics, it’s vital that you have access to that kind of service.”
Randy DuTeau, executive director of the Columbia County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said boosting bandwidth could help the county attract more invitational sporting events, where participants and their family consume massive amounts of data streaming video and posting pictures on social media.
“When people go to participate in something these days, they want to share it with everyone,” he said.
Though WCTEL is a relatively small company – its service area includes Abbeville, McCormick and southern Anderson counties – it is no stranger to high-speed. It was the first company in South Carolina to offer an all-fiber network.
As a member-owned nonprofit, WCTEL faces less bottom-line pressure than “incumbent” investor-owned service providers, such as Comcast, WOW! and AT&T, which it says enables it to go into less profitable, low-density neighborhoods, such as Appling’s 28-home Graystone subdivision.
Still, the laws of economics apply. That’s why WCTEL’s WCFIBER venture is relying on a “pre-registration” model, which requires a certain percentage of homeowners in a given “zone” to commit to service before it will extend fiber lines.

Abbeville, S.C.-based company introduces new broadband service to Columbia County | The Augusta Chronicle