Don’t squander chance to build ‘wireless cloud’

IMAGINE SOUTH Carolina owned a huge tract of land that a company wanted to use for a facility that would employ thousands of South Carolinians at well-above-market wages. Our state can’t use the land itself unless we spend a tremendous amount of money to develop it, and the company would pay us millions of dollars a year to lease it. But if we don’t agree to the lease, the federal government will take our land away; the company still might build, but it might not get a chance to, and in either event the federal government will receive any lease payments, instead of the state.

The idea that we would fritter away such an opportunity is unimaginable. Yet that is essentially what will happen if the Legislature doesn’t act quickly to remove the handcuffs that prevent ETV from preserving a state-owned asset that is potentially far more valuable.

What ETV holds is not land but federal licenses, covering the entire state, to broadcast its distance learning programs to schools. Federal law requires it to convert to digital signals, which will free up bandwidth that businesses can lease to provide high-speed, wireless internet service. But ETV can only lease the bandwidth if it presents a plan to the federal government by Jan. 19.

A lease would generate money for the state, and the state could put any conditions it wanted on the lease; the obvious, imperative one would be to require that the network cover the entire state, not just urban areas.

Other states don’t hold such a complete set of licenses, so this potentially gives us an economic recruitment tool that no other state could offer: the ability for anybody, anywhere in the state, to tap into wireless, broadband service of the sort that is now limited to hot spots in bookstores and coffee shops. Having a “wireless cloud” or “hot state” could take economic development to the next level, propel education and medical care forward and put South Carolina at the forefront of the information economy.

So what are we doing to take advantage of this opportunity? Well, last year the Legislature passed a law that prohibited ETV from doing anything without specific legislative authority. It created a panel to study the matter; some telecommunications companies made the nonsensical claim that leasing out the spectrum would be a huge gamble for the state. The panel suggested hiring a company to study the options. Tick. Tock.

Legislators started talking about the state building a broadband network itself; these are the same legislators who are seriously talking about privatizing our public schools. Do they really think we believe they’ll put up money for such a massive state incursion into the private market? They say we must take care not to give away the taxpayers’ assets, and they’re right about that. But let’s be clear: The only way we will give away anything is by failing to lease out our excess capacity. Frankly, we can see no reason to keep ETV handcuffed other than to protect those companies that fear competition, much as some phone companies used to fear cell phone service. The Legislature has no business engaging in that sort of protectionism.

There are important policy questions about how to put our bandwidth out to bid: Should we lease it to a single company or bid it out regionally to multiple companies? Should we require the winning bidder to provide access to the entire state? Should we require that service be provided for free to schools, libraries and other public places, or even at reduced costs in underserved areas? Those all require debate. What should require no debate is whether to move forward. Of course we should. The clock is ticking.