Meet Jim Stritzinger

Jim's South Carolina Retirement Adventure

For someone with a big job, lofty expectations, and plenty of pressure, Jim Stritzinger (Director, SC Broadband Office) is way happier than he should be. 

The native of Delaware who fell in love with the state during childhood family vacations, is living his best life in The Palmetto State, running a team of six in Columbia.

Stritzinger’s Prologue 

Near the turn of the millennium, Jim found his company being purchased, leading to the opportunity to move to Hilton Head, raise his girls, and play a lot of golf.  

He recalls that after eight years he did some self-reflection and realized that he was “living on a barrier island and my brain is still on fire.” 

After a variety of career hops, he became the Executive Director of non-profit Connect South Carolina in 2014 and noticed that… gasp… broadband maps were a collection of hyperbole, wishes, and lies. “I was an electrical engineer and a data geek with a hypothesis that the federal broadband maps were really awful. I knew many of the ISPs were significantly overstating their advertised speeds.” 

As an entrepreneur/engineer, the faulty maps continued to perturb him, so he decided to do something about it in 2019 when he got to work creating broadband maps with the assistance of Congressman Jim Clyburn, Ookla, his own expertise, as well as some common sense. 

The process for him started with ignoring advertised speeds and instead focusing on the broadband technology available per census block. For example, if one area was DSL, he deduced that instead of 25/3 Mbps, maybe they are getting 6/1 Mbps, at best. He took the best available technology in each census block, projected speeds, and produced the first iteration of a complete set of accurate South Carolina broadband maps.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Stritzinger’s maps were catching on and landing him consulting contracts with local ISPs who paid  him to map their own service territories. He describes what happened next as receiving his “dream phone call” came offering the SC state broadband post in March of 2021. 

The pandemic was the impetus, as Stritzinger says that the State of South Carolina had never invested “even a penny on broadband,”and was now allocating $50 million. This was broken up into $30 million designated for infrastructure, $20 million for hotspots for kids so they could do their homework, and what was left over to be used to stand up a broadband mapping effort. 

Created in July of 2021, the office is housed under the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff because, Stritzinger explains, it was the trusted place that had telecom background thanks to required oversight of South Carolina Universal Service Funds.

From Zero to $1 Billion Hero

It was a big change to go from zero dollars in June 2020 to where we stand today - over a billion dollars as of June 2023.

“When I started, I was a single-person office inheriting a $30 million state grant program,” says Stritzinger. “Combine this with the South Carolina General Assembly allocating $400 million ARPA ($215 million SLFRF and $185 million CPF) in May of 2022, and in June 2023 a ~$551 million allocation of BEAD.” 

That’s a rapid change for a state that had never invested in broadband, says Stritzinger, “in less than two years, we go from zero to $30 million dollars, one-man broadband office to a full-time, six-person team with a billion-dollar budget. 

First Things First 

On June 30, Stritzinger and his team announced the completion of its $400 million American Rescue Plan (ARPA) grant program. In all, the grants will result in more than 13K miles of fiber that will serve 112,380 BSLs through 19 ISPs.

Stritzinger explains that he and his team have been extremely thorough and meticulous with these grants to help ensure BSLs have enforceable commitments in place, “Every home that we fund with ARPA dollars is one less home that we need to fund for BEAD.”

BEAD Begins 

Stritzinger explains that because South Carolina has lined up ARPA commitments, the BEAD Challenge Process includes these “enforceable commitments” and the BEAD Challenge is now complete. 

The enforceable commitments, predicts Stritzinger, will lower the number of BSLs that BEAD will need to reach and will be less than 32,000 total locations. For those keeping score at home (and for those who are alone), that’s ~$551 million for less than 32,000 locations. Stritzinger anticipates the 32K locations mostly getting fiber, save some extremely remote rural locations (i.e., barrier islands). 

As for South Carolina’s timeline for Volume 2 approval, Stritzinger notes that his office is in no hurry. In fact, he admits that “Candidly, we volunteered to be last. No state wants to be deploying ARPA dollars while at the same time trying to do BEAD. It's impossible.”

More than just the strain running both ARPA and BEAD simultaneously puts on the broadband office, Stritzinger points out that to have both programs on their radar is “near impossible for the Internet Service Providers. ARPA has completely consumed our ISPs and to try to drop BEAD on them at the same time just wouldn’t be possible.”

He notes that ‘everybody’s exhausted’ and believes that “when all the dust settles, five, ten years from now, I think the states that played it slower with BEAD are going to be the ones that get rewarded the most.”

Timeline 

Stritzinger anticipates a volume two approval by the end of September, equating to the 365-day window starting around October 1, 2024. 

That puts South Carolina into the 4^th quarter of 2025 for Final Proposal submission, followed by what Stritzinger says will be NTIA approvals and a lengthy permit process. Therefore, BEAD network construction is probably not going to take place much before the summer of 2026. “We've tried to do as good of a job with our ARPA money as we could, recognizing that BEAD won't start construction until the summer of 2026,” says Stritzinger. “I'm relentlessly trying to get every home we can connected before then.”

BEAD project areas in South Carolina will be zip codes. Stritzinger is not overly concerned that ISPs will apply, stating that his perspective is “Some ISPs are going to want to apply just on a defensive mode because of the way the scoring works. ISPs can't allow a couple of mushroom BSLs to pop up in your service area and allow a competitor to come in. There's going to be some defensive applicants.” 
 

Non-Deployment Funding

Back to the math of ~$551 million for less than 32K BSLs - Stritzinger says it’s a great ‘problem’ to have because he can designate approximately $232 million to BEAD Non-Deployment programs. “I'm working with NTIA on some special things that I'm personally extremely excited [about]. I'm now in a kind of fantasy land for being a broadband director, because we're going to be able to invest heavily in a variety of areas other states will not be able to.” 

He has projects on the drawing board including everything from middle-mile fiber rings to improve statewide backhaul to a $7 million stipend program for broadband staff that should “inject 150 mission critical people into the bloodstream of South Carolina very fast.”

Additional investments he anticipates include $5 million for multiple dwelling unit infrastructure and $20 million slated to build a Virtual Primary Care program in South Carolina.

Virtual Primary Care is about replacing expensive ambulance transport for low income, critical-care patients to the ER for primary care visits. “By partnering with the Medical University of South Carolina/SC Teleheath Alliance, we’ll equip these homes with connected medical equipment, train the residents how to use it – and – cover the annual cost of high-speed broadband service for each home,” says Stritzinger. “This is our creative approach to affordability and should wind up simultaneously saving the state substantial money.” 

“Therefore, with $232 plus million dollars pointed in the BEAD Non-Deployment direction, I think we can make some magic happen,” extols Stritzinger. 

You Cannot Wipe that Smile off His Face! 

You can tell that Stritzinger has found his calling. 

His exuberance abounds as he states “I'm very blessed. I've got the job of my lifetime, the capstone on anything I've ever done.”

He reiterates that these blessings include a great staff, a supportive legislature, and his peers. He shares that “the state broadband directors have all become friends” which seems obvious for those of us watching. “As I've gotten to know the other broadband directors, I've become aware that they all have a superpower. Each one kind of came into their role from a different place. Some came into it from a digital equity posture. Some came into it with federal grant experience. Others were political appointees; however, all are talented and willing to help each other.”

He wraps up our conversation saying that “technology has been really good to me over the years.” 

At age 60, Stritzinger sees this post as a chance to “leave a legacy,” and he seems poised to do just that.