South Carolina Governor Proposes $2M for Broadband

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford announced that his budget for fiscal year 2007-08 will include a request for $2 million to bring high-speed Internet access to rural parts of the state. This allocation from the state’s Capital Reserve Fund would be used to create a Rural Broadband fund to increase broadband penetration in underserved communities and is designed to boost economic development by providing Internet access to students, businesses and entrepreneurs.

 

High-speed broadband connections are only available in 73 percent of the areas receiving phone service in South Carolina, according to recent data from the state’s Office of Regulatory Staff. The governor’s budget cites a study by the Freedom Works Foundation, which estimates that widespread broadband deployment in the state would add nearly 13,000 jobs and increase gross state product by $4.55 billion. The new fund would support efforts to provide rural counties and other local government entities with high-speed broadband, which could be used to assist local businesses, entrepreneurs and schools.

 

A new, nine-member South Carolina Broadband Advisory Committee would be created at the Department of Commerce to manage, oversee and monitor use of the fund. The committee, chaired by the state’s Secretary of Commerce, would prioritize funding to areas of the state that have been underserved by the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

 

The South Carolina FY 2007-08 Executive budget is available at: http://www.scgovernor.com/interior.asp?SiteContentId=6&pressid=290&NavId=54&ParentId=0

Details of the Rural Broadband fund are available in the “Improve the Conditions for Economic Growth” section starting on page 161.



Need more information on broadband?

No problem, we’re here to help. There are 65 reports found by searching for the topic "broadband/telecommunications" at the TBED Resource Center. We think the following are quite interesting:

• Measuring Broadband's Economic Impact by Lehr, Osorio, and Gillett
• Broadband and Economic Development: A Municipal Case Study from Florida by Ford and Koutsky

Each week's edition of the SSTI Weekly Digest includes stories highlighting state and local S&T strategic plans, indices or impact analyses. In addition, the findings of academic research and policy studies are included in the Digest's occasional Recent Research series. These brief articles, though, expose just the tip of the iceberg of reports, plans and studies published each month that could be useful in refining your efforts to build a tech-based economy.



That's where the TBED Resource Center comes in handy. The TBED Resource Center, developed by SSTI in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy, is an interactive website providing a wealth of information for practitioners, policymakers, university faculty, and researchers alike. With links to more than 4,400 reports, the website features information in a variety of TBED-critical topics in the U.S. and abroad.



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