The FCC must have been watching the happenings in SC

According the Huffington Post, the FCC is unveiling sweeping changes to America's National Broadband Plan. This was a key component of the Obama Administration's Recovery Act. It has the potential to effect more than 100 million households in the country and will increase the connectivity/download speeds to more than 100 megabits per second... that's really really fast.

In their efforts to modernize the plan though it looks like they are mimicking the efforts of South Carolina's legislature.

Over the past three years in South Carolina the legislature has looked for a way to sell off the excess bandwidth of the ETV system. One of the biggest concerns the republican dominated legislature faced was a belief that they must sell the bandwidth into the private market because otherwise it would be government intervention... you know the drill. The plan would have been quietly put through had it not been for the efforts of the Progressive Network and their executive director Brett Bursey. Their efforts though noble, were fruitless and the legislature sold off the bandwidth in two twenty year contracts valuing $143 million.

The two companies who were awarded the contract in October of 2009, Clearwire and BridgeMaxx, have no information about their plans for South Carolina's Broadband Spectrum available on their websites. Other than press releases dated from mid 2009 when the committee recommended the state make the deal with the two companies there's not been a peep.

Hopefully these two companies, who are poised to also reap the benefits of the proposed FCC changes, will be a bit more visible than they have been in the Palmetto State.