Southern Coastal Cable

Transcription

1 Southern Coastal Cable To: From: FCC Next Generation Networks Rural Broadband Experiments DC Southern Coastal Cable, LLC Kendall Buckner Comptroller Date: March 6, 2014 Re: Expression of Interest in Participating in FCC Rural Broadband Experiments Southern Coastal Cable, LLC (SCC) is one of two incumbents serving the City of Georgetown, South Carolina and some areas within the County of Georgetown, South Carolina with Internet, VOIP (Eligible Telecommunications Carrier, ETC) and Cable TV Services. Time Warner Cable is the other fiber provider in our area. SCC is interested in providing the same services to the un-served areas as indicated by the census tracts outlined below. Southern Coastal Cable currently does participate in the universal service programs in census tracts ; ; ; 9206; 9207 and Brief History of Company SCC s system started construction in 2002 and was mostly completed by The city of Georgetown eventually allowed for the Southern Coastal Cable to deliver cable to the entire city which at the time would be considered an over-build in the cable industry. The town granted the franchise and later Georgetown County granted a County franchise to allow cable to reach un-served and underserved areas. Major plant was being constructed through the mid to late 2000 s. The company first added internet capabilities to its product line and most recently VOIP in The company is considered a small town locally owned and operated Cable Company. 1

2 System Location Southern Coastal Cable, LLC operates a hybrid fiber, coaxial cable television plant with VOIP and Internet services serving residents and businesses in the City of Georgetown, and surrounding areas in Georgetown County, South Carolina. System Description Twenty four fiber optic nodes divide the system into manageable service areas. The coaxial plant has been designed to pass 1GHz using passive equipment rated at 1GHz. Active equipment (Line Amplifiers and Line Extenders modules) are rated at 870 MHz. Coaxial cable types include.750 for trunk cable,.500 for feeder cable and RG-6 and RG-11 for service drops. High count Fiber Optic cable has been run strategically throughout the system to service nodes and provide Metro E connectivity to area businesses. Battery back-up power supplies power active equipment throughout the system. Cable Services Offered SCC offers basic Cable Television Service with 82 analog channels to all customers. Digital Cable is also available offering an additional 102 video channels and 39 digital audio channels. Four Premium channel tiers including HBO and Showtime are offered. High Definition channels presently number 52 with plans for additional channels to be added soon. Video on Demand can be ordered by customers with set top boxes. DVR (Digital Video Recorder) set top boxes complement customer options. Other Services High Speed Internet is available to all subscribers with many packages available depending on their requirements. Business customers are catered to with custom installations and office networking. Metro E service is offered to businesses that have high bandwidth requirements as well as virtual private networks for high security needs. service using Southern Coastal Cable s domain (@sccctv.net) is included with subscriber Internet service. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephone service is offered to both residential and business customers. Customers experience great savings with no long distance charges on calls made in the United States. International calls may also be placed with reasonable rates. 2

3 Headend Our transmission equipment is located at our office facility on South Fraser Street in the Maryville Community. The state of the art Analog/Digital network is scalable for future expansion as technology changes. All equipment is protected by a battery backup system and a Cummings diesel powered generator with 72 hours of run time in case of a power system failure. All equipment is cooled by air conditioning systems with redundancy. Service and Support Our trained staff provides excellent customer service 24 hours a day. After normal business hours, our professional answering service provides support contacting oncall service technicians whenever needed. Internet and VOIP customers have access to our 24 hour support company that works behind the scene providing very reliable service. SCC is interested in these census tract areas listed below: Georgetown, South Carolina Census Tracks "SC","45043","Georgetown"," ",485,17, "SC","45043","Georgetown"," ",104,28, Objectives for Build Out: Provide Internet speeds up to 20mb/5mb. Provide VOIP Provide Cable TV Services Build out will consist of Fiber Optic backbone with Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) with the possibility of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) especially for businesses and County Offices. Partnership Possibilities: Currently there is some interest in a partnership with Georgetown County Government to provide these services to Residents and Businesses in order to strengthen and improve the economic impact throughout un-served areas. 3

4 Estimated Time Line: Once the system was mapped and approved, the construction time based on the estimated mileage of plant needed would be approximately months. It is estimated the fiber backbone would take approximately four months to complete. From there, the HFC or FTTH we estimate to take an additional eight months Beneficiaries of Terrestrial Fiber Optic Services: There are three schools housing local libraries, three Fire/EMT stations and approximately four County Government buildings housing offices along with one Magistrate s office and approximately 200 locally owned businesses and several doctors offices affiliated with the Georgetown County Hospital System that could benefit greatly from the services SCC intends on providing. The area also houses over 100 churches covering multiple denominations which are a business segment SCC has a high penetration rate with locally. The areas SCC is interested in vary in density of households per square mile. Most routes to the higher dense areas require fiber being run through single digit households per mile areas. It is estimated that between 6-8,000 residents would be positively affected. The areas SCC is interested in are considered rural and as indicated above considered un-served by terrestrial means. The proposed service areas would be considered low-slightly moderate income populations. SCC currently has a fiber rich backbone that ends approximately ten miles from some of these areas. The cost to run fiber to those areas is cost prohibited due to the low households per mile that could be serviced en-route to the higher dense areas. SCC has enough capacity that if subsidies for cost were utilized to run the fiber to the higher dense areas it could then be economically feasible. Services Proposed for Un-Served areas: Proposed Services Estimated Pricing Residential VOIP $34.95 Business VOIP/Internet $49.95-$99.95 Residential Internet $24.95-$49.95 Cable TV Basic $18.00 Cable TV Basic/Expanded $42.50 Digital Cable TV $

5 Note: Bundle packages will be available starting from $ $89.95 covering VOIP, Internet and Cable services. Estimated Cost for Build Out: It is estimated that the cost of construction of a hybrid fiber/coax plant is approximately Three Million Dollars ($3,000,000). This figure is based on between miles of fiber and taking into consideration any railroad crossings and addressing the low-country swamp areas. This estimate is expected to be utilized in a one-time disbursement as it is anticipated that once the fiber backbone is constructed, extensions can be built and potential customers can be serviced and therefore generating cash flow to cover plant cost from that point. 5