Fiber For Around The World And Around The Corner
Google’s coming to Myrtle Beach? What’s a subsea cable? How does this impact HTC?
Google’s coming to Myrtle Beach? What’s a subsea cable? How does this impact HTC?These are the three questions we’ve been asked a lot since it was first announced Google selected Myrtle Beach as its latest cable landing station. But what does this actually mean and how will it impact our local community and your Cooperative?
The Information Superhighway
Think of these fiber cables and the accompanying data center as an on and off ramp for an international superhighway. The subsea cables serve as transmission routes for massive amounts of data to and from the United States and various counties. These include Argentina, Portugal and Bermuda for Google and Spain for Meta. There are four other off ramp (cable landing station) locations along the east coast including in New York, Virginia, Jacksonville and Miami. By adding Myrtle Beach to this list, this creates more diversity and redundancy for international networks.
The landing station has the capacity to support five subsea cables, three of which are already in the works. The data center, which was built and managed by DC Blox, will serve as a sort of traffic control, or routing location, for that data before it travels to or from other locations around the United States. Landing stations, and their storage capacity, often attract other tech giants who want, and need, access to that “superhighway”.
The Local Impact
So, what does this mean for the Greater Myrtle Beach community and for you as a consumer? While the $31.5 million landing station is expected to create a handful of jobs, its longer-term economic impact could be much greater. By simply having big names like Google and Meta in town, paired with an existing state-of-the-art local fiber network from HTC, our region has a substantial advantage in recruiting additional technology sector companies and serving as a technology hub.
It’s important to note that these new cables and data center won’t be offering internet services to individual residences or businesses. What they do offer are data storage options for large companies and a connection point or “on ramp” for other data centers located in Atlanta, Greenville, the recently announced QTS Data Center in York County, plus others.
Your Daily Source of Fiber
Many people don’t realize that the concept of fiber in the greater Myrtle Beach area is not a new one. HTC began installing fiber in 2007 and has deployed more than 10,000 miles of fiber to date to support current and future broadband needs. That’s enough to get to California and back, twice. Supplying speeds of up to 1 Gig for members, our network is approximately 85 percent fiber and growing closer to 100 percent by the day.
HTC is the only local fiber provider and we’re proud that our fiber network supports the major industries in our region, ranging from small businesses to hospital systems, educational institutions and municipalities. Thanks to the proactive vision of Cooperative leadership, and the $293 million we’ve invested in our network over the years, nearly 100 percent of Horry County had access to high speed internet before the start of the pandemic. Since 2020, we’ve also made rapid progress towards narrowing the gap in rural Georgetown and Marion counties.
In addition to our infrastructure investment, the fact HTC is a cooperative allows us to invest in our local community and in our membership. Our 650 employees live and work in the communities we serve. We’ve also returned $174 million to our members in the form of capital credits since 1979 and we regularly make significant contributions to local nonprofits and economic development efforts.
We at HTC believe that our state-of-the-art network, its employees and members are tremendous economic development assets for our region. These assets, paired with the new cable landing station and subsea cables, stand to make our region an even more attractive option for a larger cross-section of businesses which rely on technologies and telecommunications services like HTC provides.
