I hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend and are now settling back into the new school year. Students all over the state are now using their broadband connections both at school and at home to complete assignments, research projects and attend online classes. The days of visiting the local library to use the encyclopedias and other reference books is long gone. Today’s generation has access to a wealth of information at their fingertips with high speed broadband. Aside from using the internet for schoolwork, many of us use it to stream our favorite shows through such services as Amazon or Netflix, to access social media, to play games online or even home automation.
Recently a report looked at broadband speed offerings across all of South Carolina providers and asked them to list their maximum speed offering. The report found that 342,000 homes in the state don’t have access to 10Mbps speeds. Sandhill has worked hard and can now deliver 10Mbps speeds to the majority of our broadband subscribers, many of which can receive even faster speeds. With that being said, we are continuing to expand our fiber network and have added a tremendous amount of fiber in the town of Chesterfield, Pageland and areas around McBee over the past several months. To date, we have converted 5 percent of our broadband subscribers to fiber and that number is increasing monthly. Sandhill is also adding roadside cabinets in more rural areas of the county to offer those subscribers higher speeds.
In order to provide this next generation of service, we will continue to upgrade our network alongside adding fiber to support the growth. I’m pleased to say that our network upgrades are continuing at a fast pace and we have completed three of our seven exchanges to this new fiber network – Ruby, Patrick, and McBee. This month we will complete Bethune. Once complete, these upgrades will put us well ahead of many areas around the state.
Each month, I provide feedback to our Membership regarding improvements to services and equipment. I do appreciate hearing from you and hope to answer your questions. Together we are growing our community in a positive way for our businesses, our Members and our future Members.
Thank you as always for being a part of our Cooperative.
Lee Chambers
CEO/General Manager