TDS Telecom says it will expand broadband access in pockets of Berkeley and Charleston counties under a federal program designed to improve Internet speeds in rural areas.
The Madison, Wis.-based online service provider said it would install new infrastructure in areas around Awendaw, Bonneau, McClellanville and St. Stephen over the next decade.
Elsewhere in the state, TDS - short for Telephone and Data Systems - will also be working in parts of Aiken, Barnwell and Orangeburg counties, near the towns of Norway and Williston.
TDS Telecom says it will expand broadband access in pockets of Berkeley and Charleston counties under a federal program designed to improve Internet speeds in rural areas.
The Madison, Wis.-based online service provider said it would install new infrastructure in areas around Awendaw, Bonneau, McClellanville and St. Stephen over the next decade.
Elsewhere in the state, TDS - short for Telephone and Data Systems - will also be working in parts of Aiken, Barnwell and Orangeburg counties, near the towns of Norway and Williston.
The FCC's aim is to chip away at the relatively high rate of South Carolinians who don't have access to Internet speeds that the FCC considers adequate - more than 25 megabits per second. Most of the lines TDS plans to install will have to meet that requirement.
Across the state, nearly one in five people doesn't have access to those speeds, but the problem is especially pronounced in rural areas, where the number jumps to two in five, according to an FCC report released last year.
That holds true in the Lowcountry, where broadband access is widely available in urban areas but relatively sparse outside of Charleston and its suburbs. The FCC says that roughly two-thirds of the nearly 57,000 tri-county residents who can't get 25 Mbps download speeds live in rural areas.
