By JIM FAILE

The City of Hartsville is seeking more than $15.1 million in federal stimulus funding to pay for infrastructure for a broadband fiber optic network.

The city submitted an application for the funding to the federal government on Monday, Hartsville Mayor Mel Pennington said.

The application is based on a $50,000 feasibility study on the possibility of a city-owned broadband network that could allow the city to provide services such as high speed Internet access, digital telephone and cable television service to residents and businesses on the open market.

Pennington said if the city is successful in obtaining funding for a fiber optic network the system will affect Hartsville’s economy and quality of life in ways that will change the face and future of the city for generations to come.

The city is requesting a total of $15,117,831 for the project. About 70 percent of that amount would be grant funding; the remaining portion would be a loan, according to the application.

The $15.1 million represents all capital that will be required to design and build the proposed system, according to the application.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $7.2 billion to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S.

“Our plan is to use technology, as represented by broadband, to assist us in our economic growth and to improve the quality of life for our citizens,” the application states.

“This will be the biggest thing to happen in the city of Hartsville in its history,” Pennington said.

The proposed Hartsville project would allow the city initially to provide broadband service to portions of Hartsville and to the town of Lamar, which is currently without any broadband or cable television service, and to the rural corridor between the two towns. The city would eventually expand service to all of Hartsville, Pennington said.

“The proposed service area includes substantial unserved areas that cannot receive broadband today,” the application states. “The proposed service area is 100 percent rural.”

Pennington has been pushing for the broadband project since he served on the city’s planning commission and made it the centerpiece of his campaign for mayor last year.

“Like I’ve said from the beginning, this gives us the opportunity to do two things: one, bring stimulus funding into our community, and two, change the future of Hartsville and change the future for our children,” the mayor said.

He cautioned, however, about being overly optimistic about getting the funding. Pennington rated Hartsville’s chances at winning approval at about 50-50. “I think that’s the same for everybody else,” he said.

Among the advantages Hartsville has, he said, is that the system would provide broadband services for public and private educational institutions such as Coker College, the S.C. Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics and Florence-Darlington Technical College’s Hartsville Satellite Campus.

He said the ability to offer broadband service will give the city a new and highly effective tool for enhancing economic development efforts, encouraging annexation and improving the quality of life in a number of ways.

“Data is the new water,” Pennington said, referring to the city’s ability to provide water service to residents. “We’re almost as reliant on data and the transmission of data today as we have been on drinking water in the past.”

“It’s hard for small cities to compete in economic development,” Pennington said. “This changes that. Everybody has an economic development board. Everybody’s trying to make themselves stand out. That’s what I like about this. And it affects quality of life.”

The new system, if funded, will create a brand new revenue stream for the city, he said. Based on the feasibility study, the mayor said that by year three of operations the system could be generating as much as $2 million annually in profit for the city.

“For a $5,000 investment, that is huge,” Pennington said.

Five thousand dollars is what Hartsville City Council agreed to commit to the feasibility study last fall. The remaining cost was picked up by private funding sources.

The city-owned and operated fiber optic system would be a fiber to the premises (FTTP) system and would increase the availability, affordability and adoption of broadband services speed in the area, according to the application.

The proposed FTTP system would make broadband service available to 5,118 households and 400 businesses in the proposed service area, according to the application. It would also make the service available to 122 critical community facilities at price discounts of 25 percent or greater, the application states.

Dave Stockton of Uptown Services LLC, a private consulting firm that specializes in municipal broadband, performed the feasibility study and submitted the funding application to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Broadband Infrastructure Program, part of the federal government’s Broadband USA initiative.

Stockton said the study demonstrates a need for broadband service in the area. “I’m optimistic relative to the need and the financial analysis that came out of the study,” he said. But he cautioned about being overly optimistic.

He said he expects to have some indication probably this summer about RUS’s inclinations toward the city’s request.