Dear Editor:

South Carolina is on the edge of blowing a unique opportunity to be number one in something good for a change.

Ours is the only state in the nation that

— Owns all the educational broadcasting licenses the FCC has issued to that state;

— Has a statewide, unified system; and

— Supports its entire educational broadcasting infrastructure with state tax dollars.

When the FCC mandated the switch to digital broadcasting, it created the unique opportunity for South Carolina to own — or lease to private companies — the nation's only public, statewide wireless Internet system.

On Aug. 5, a legislative subcommittee will hear testimony on the terms of a contract to lease all of the state's educational broadband capacity to two private companies. The S.C. Progressive Network has been urging the state to retain control of 25 percent of the spectrum for public use.

"Throughout telecommunications history, policy-makers have routinely underestimated the utility of the public airwaves," said Sascha Meinrath, Director of New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, who will testify at the hearing. "South Carolina has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deploy affordable broadband for all residents. It would be a shame for the State to squander such a valuable spectrum asset for pennies on the dollar. This is an issue of prioritizing long-term progress over short-term gain."

With a clear plan and the political will, we can use the licenses and infrastructure we own to address big problems. It's a relatively small investment that would yield long-term rewards for education, job opportunities and innovative health care delivery. We are already spending millions of public dollars through hundreds of individual leases with private providers to local governments and public institutions.

Broadband access has been called the electricity of the 21st century. Just last century, electricity was considered a luxury. When electricity wasn't reaching homes in rural South Carolina, the Rural Electric Co-ops were created as publicly owned utilities to power areas it wasn't profitable for corporations to serve. Everyone now considers access to electricity a right.

Internet access is still a luxury not available everywhere. Geography and income generally determines if your neighborhood has broadband Internet access. A 2008 report by the Census found that only 39 percent of South Carolina's households have broadband access. The current contract only requires the companies to provide minimal service in unserved and under-served areas to retain the license.

The only way the entire state can get online anytime soon is through public, cooperative efforts. Private partnerships can lever public efforts, especially when the public retains ownership of the spectrum.

It will take time and money to build our broadband access across the state. But it can be done one piece at a time. One WiMAX unit placed on existing ETV towers can serve a 10-mile radius with robust broadband for less than $100,000. For example, Richland County is spending $300,000 annually on Internet service and USC just signed a $840,000 annual contract with AT&T for a campus Wifi system. A public WiMAX/Wifi system for the entire county could be paid for by what USC will spend in several years. The public would own the system and it would cost a fraction to maintain as compared to the annual lease fees.

If the contract leases out all the available spectrum to private companies for the next 30 years, much of S.C. will remain in the digital dark for some time to come, with public institutions across the state paying high rent for decades.

The commission operated mostly in executive session, and the contract is still secret. We worked hard to help the Commission meet its mandated responsibility to consider "the costs and benefits, both monetary and societal, that would be borne by or inure to the public at large, as well as the public to be served." If the contracts are approved as written, we will have failed to fulfill that mandate.

Robert Rini, a high-powered DC attorney who specializes in FCC law, was hired by the commission to help draw up the contracts. Last November he recommended that the state should retain control of 25 percent of the spectrum for public uses and that this would "not appreciably" reduce the value of the remaining 75 percent. The commission ignored their lawyer's advice.

The commission never did a cost-benefit analysis of the public retaining control over 25 percent of the state-owned spectrum, compared to the $35 million the current leases will bring in over the next 30 years. That $35 million divided by 30 years, divided by 46 counties, comes to about $25,000 per county.

Orangeburg County, a rural and relatively under-served area, currently pays $1,400 a month for Internet service for 7 (out of 140) county owned buildings and $5,166 a month for mobile phone service to track the GPS of the 136 county vehicles. That's $78,000 a year for just these limited services.

The subcommittee needs to send the contracts back to the commission and tell them to sharpen their pencils and check their bias against public ownership of anything at the door.

Not on the table when the commission crafted its contracts is the $7 billion in federal stimulus grants for broadband development. Experts around the country are mystified as to why South Carolina didn't propose a coordinated state plan to apply for a grant to fund a statewide broadband service.

Each state has been assured of at least one grant. For probably much less than the total of all the local S.C. grants submitted, we could have had a winning proposal for a statewide public system that would be the envy of 49 other states. It's not too late. If we retain control of the spectrum the contract intends to lease out, we can use the value of the licenses and spectrum for the 80-20 percent state matching funds for the next two rounds of stimulus grants.

The Joint Bond Review Board subcommittee with Sen. Glenn McConnell, Sen. Harvey Peeler, Rep. Dan Cooper and Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, now has the opportunity to order a study on the benefits of public ownership of 25 percent of the educational broadband spectrum and make an informed decision that takes SC's long term public interest to heart.

Brett Bursey, Executive Director — SC Progressive Network