NPR Marketplace
We’ve been talking for more than a year now about how the internet is everything. And there are still places in the United States where there basically is none. For example, Allendale, South Carolina, a town of around 3,000 people that’s not far from the Georgia border. Officials have called it an internet desert. The state got $50 million in CARES Act money for broadband expansion and used some of it to install a wireless network in Allendale that runs at broadband speeds.
It’s run by a local internet service provider and free to residents through the end of October. I spoke with Jim Stritzinger, South Carolina’s broadband coordinator. He said the state went with wireless over fiber broadband because it’s fast to deploy. They went from nothing to offering service in 61 days. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.