Hargray Communications is a telecommunications provider based on

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina Hilton Head Island, often referred to as simply Hilton Head, is a South Carolina Lowcountry, Lowcountry resort town and barrier island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. It is northeast of Savannah, Georgia (as the crow flies), a ...

, United States. It operates internet throughout the

Lowcountry The Lowcountry (sometimes Low Country or just low country) is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. The region includes significant salt marshes and other coastal waterways, making it an impor ...

region of South Carolina and the Savannah region of Georgia. Hargray has a monopoly on parts of the Lowcountry offering

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide- bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission m ...

, and

landline A landline is a physical telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber from the subscriber's premises to the network, allowing multiple phones to operate simultaneously on the same phone number. It is also referred to as plain old ...

services. Hargray formerly resold cellular phone service through

Cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

History

Hargray was founded in nearby Hardeeville under the name ''Harcan Telephone''. Throughout the following decades, Hargray expanded in Bluffton and eventually onto Hilton Head Island. By the 1980s, Hargray began offering cable television service to customers in the region in addition to telephone service. In 2007, Hargray was acquired by Quadrangle Capital Partners. Several years later, in 2010, Quadrangle unsuccessfully attempted to sell Hargray. In May 2021, Hargray was acquired by

Cable One Cable One, Inc. is an American broadband communications provider. Under the Sparklight brand, it provides cable television, internet, and phone services to 24 U.S. states and 1.1 million residential and business customers. It also owns the Fidel ...

Data Publishing

Hargray established Data Publishing in 1986. It is responsible for publishing all of the Horry Telephone Directories. The company continued to expand and publish directories for other companies including Horry Telephone Cooperative and

Windstream Windstream Holdings, Inc., trading as Windstream Communications is a provider of voice and data network communications to businesses across the United States. Under the Kinetic brand, it offers broadband, phone and digital streaming TV services to ...

, among others. Under Quadrangle's ownership of Hargray, the company was ultimately sold to Horry Telephone Cooperative. The deal was completed in September 2012.

Acquisitions

Hargray has acquired several cable systems in its service area, including Charter's system in Beaufort as well as a few systems from Shentel. In February 2020, Hargray acquired Electronet, a fiber-based broadband communications company operating in

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of and the only incorporated municipality in Leon County, Florida, Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Fl ...

Technology

Multiple technologies are employed depending on region, all reaching from the core headend and central office in Pritchardville, South Carolina. For television, Hargray deploys

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

or QAM digital TV service over coaxial cable. IPTV is handled via the Ericsson Mediaroom platform. Voice services ( POTS) are carried over both

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

and copper

telephone line A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or oth ...

. Internet is provided by either

DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...

3.1 cable modems,

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

modems, or

fiber to the home Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...

. Hargray also provides public WiFi service and dial-up to customers. As of September 27, 2012, Hargray has completed an integration of 7,000 Charter customers in the Beaufort, South Carolina area. Hargray Communications Group has 350 total employees across all of its locations and generates $101.43 million in 2017 for sales (USD).

References

External links

Hargray
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina Cable television companies of the United States Telecommunications companies of the United States Internet service providers of the United States Companies based in South Carolina Telecommunications companies established in 1949 1949 establishments in South Carolina 2021 mergers and acquisitions {{US-telecom-company-stub