Supports Expanding Connectivity and Creating a Smart Rural Community to Lowcountry Residents and Businesses
MONCKS CORNER, SC May 25, 2021 — Home Telecom has been selected as one of the first NTCA members recognized by The Rural Broadband Association as a Smart Connected CommunitySM provider. The Smart Connected CommunitySM program is part of the Smart Rural CommunitySM (SRC) network, a family of telecom providers who focus on keeping small-town America connected via fast, reliable, and sustainable broadband projects that improve economic development, provide technology for advancing education, and that enhance state-of-the-art healthcare through telemedicine.In 2016, Home Telecom won the NTCA’s Smart Rural Community Showcase Award based on their efforts and initiatives to keep their rural customers connected. Since then, Home Telecom, along with other rural telecommunication providers, has continually expanded their cutting-edge fiber networks into more urban areas. This growth has created the need for a national brand to evolve beyond serving rural customers. NTCA wanted to recognize the growing SRC communities and provide a new opportunity to share amazing stories from urban and rural customers.
The Smart Connected Community program is open to SRC providers who serve incumbent or competitive service territories that demonstrate metropolitan characteristics. Home Telecom, serving the Charleston, S.C., region, is the first NTCA member to be recognized as a provider.
Being selected for the program sustains Home Telecom’s commitment to their vision and growth strategy of bringing quality broadband to homes and business throughout Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties, including rural communities throughout the Lowcountry.
To receive recognition as a SCC provider, Home Telecom was required to affirm that it offers 25/3 Mbps broadband to at least 50 percent of its service area; that it has broadband subscription rates of at least 50 percent; and that it is committed to program principles of collaboration and innovation.
As a result of Home Telecom’s national recognition, the areas that Home Telecom services will now be celebrated as a Smart Connected Community, joining a national network of similarly innovative communities. Residents and businesses will be reassured when they move to a Smart Connected Community that they will have the technology and the service they expect.
“Home Telecom is proud to be a founding member of NTCA’s newest brand, Smart Connected Community,” said Home Telecom senior vice president and vice chairman of the NTCA Board of Directors, H. Keith Oliver. “It is critical for the future success of all member companies that collectively a nationally recognized consumer brand is promoted. A brand that represents our common culture of quality and locally provided services, as well as unites NTCA members as a national choice for state-of-the-art broadband service.”
Oliver continues, “At Home Telecom, we are excited to begin using the Smart Connected Community brand that effectively represents all of the markets we serve.”
Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA said they are tremendously proud of the work Smart Rural Community providers like Home Telecom are doing.
“We are so excited to welcome another Smart Rural Community provider into this growing network of innovative broadband providers delivering the internet’s fastest speeds in some of the most remote and rural communities of our country,” said Bloomfield. “I applaud Home Telecom for their commitment to enabling cutting-edge technologies across the Lowcountry that drive innovation and promote economic development in their region and nationwide.”