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S.C. appears likely to miss Wi-Max opportunity |
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Thursday, 04 December 2008 |
By Francis B. Allgood
SCBIZ Daily Staff
GREENVILLE -- The South Carolina Educational Broadband Service Commission has until Jan. 21 to determine what it will do with ETV’s airwaves that will become available in February. Some question whether or not the deadline will be met.
State Rep. Dwight Loftis introduced a bill that would use the ETV towers to create a Wi-Max broadband network for the state. When ETV transitions from an analog television signal to digital broadcasting on Feb. 17, it will free up the airwaves for an alternative use.
“ETV has enough spectrum for South Carolina to have the first Wi-Max cloud covering an entire state,” said John Warner, an advocate for the Wi-Max network and organizer of the Greenville-based investor conference InnoVenture. “Who doesn’t like that are the incumbent telecommunications carriers.”
The bill was introduced two years ago. If the commission cannot meet the deadline, the network reverts itself back to the federal government.
The plan is to lease the spectrum to a third party provider, whereby the state gets into the wholesale business, not retail. Still, there is a competitive threat – whether real or perceived – to the incumbent telecommunications industry. They could bid for the business or lose out to someone else.
Phil Yanov, president of the GSA Technology Council, attended the commission’s meeting on Oct. 16.
“I went to one of those committee meetings and it seemed to be focused around determining what a reasonable/profitable approach to divesting the state of the spectrum might look like,” he said. “It seemed to be headed toward conducting an auction at some point, but time is running out.”
Warner said he doesn’t think a private partner will be able to make application by the end of January. The state, financially, is in no position to do self-implementation, he added. He estimates if the network goes to the FCC, it will be auctioned off in about three to four years.
For more on this story, see the Dec. 8 edition of GSA Business.
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