Lumos will dish out nearly $100 million to bring its network into Greenville County, South Carolina, with plans to build over 775 miles of new fiber.
In some parts of the Greenville market this will be the first time fiber is available, Lumos claims. The provider will serve speeds from 100 Mbps to 5 Gbps in the cities of Greenville, Greer and Travelers Rest, and in some parts of Tigerville, Slate-Marietta, Taylors, Berea, Sans Souci, Judson, Gany, City View, Dunean, Golden Grove, Parker, Wade Hampton and Welcome.
As Lumos is a participating provider for the federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the 100 Mbps plan will be at no cost for eligible Greenville citizens who pair their program voucher with the Lumos plan, VP of Market Development Derek Kelly told Fierce.
This is Lumos’ third expansion into South Carolina since the start of this year. The company has invested over $250 million into the state’s Greenville, Spartanburg, Richland and Lexington counties.
The Greenville County investment is similar in size to Lumos’ Columbia, SC investment, Kelly said, which it made in January of this year. A “significant number” of households and small businesses are in Greenville County without access to fiber internet, “making it an optimal place for Lumos to expand to,” he added.
Engineering will start immediately, and construction will begin in the coming months. Kelly said it will likely be a multi-year build with service launching in 2024.
He noted the company remains on track to reach its target of 110,000 new passings by the end of the year. As of January 2023, the company’s fiber was already available to around 200,000 locations across North Carolina and Virginia.
Last year, CEO Brian Stading told Fierce that Lumos planned to finish overbuilding its legacy ILEC footprint with fiber by early 2023 and thereafter would expand into new communities both within the two states and elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region.
In April it announced two new expansion projects to bring more than 1,300 miles of fresh fiber to North and South Carolina. And in July, Lumos turned up service in Burlington, North Carolina, claiming it will be the first fiber provider for many of the city’s residents as well.
Kelly said Lumos is “excited and encouraged” by the federal government’s $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and will “assess how to utilize that funding in the coming months to close the digital divide and grow our footprint.”
He added Lumos has worked successfully with local and state governments before, including its recent service launches in Goldsboro and Orange County, North Carolina.
In August, Lumos also claimed the first U.S.-based sustainability-linked fiber financing agreement, which will support the provider's goal of delivering broadband to 1 million new households in underserved markets across the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern U.S.
Specifically, the $1.1 billion deal consists of a fully funded loan, an additional “capex facility,” which can be drawn to fund upcoming needs for Lumos (e.g., new fiber projects) as well as a “revolving credit facility for ongoing business needs.” Private equity firm EQT signed the agreement with a group of underwriters, which are all international commercial banks.