(A) The General Assembly declares that by this chapter it is establishing the South Carolina LightRail Consortium in response to growing demand for South Carolina academic institutions to expand their capacity for high speed, highly available bandwidth across the State, nation, and world in support of their missions, and to connect directly to national and regional networks for purposes directly related to their missions.

(B) For this purpose, the South Carolina LightRail shall provide facilities-based advanced high performance communications infrastructure in support of the missions of the South Carolina academic institutions that are members of the South Carolina LightRail Consortium. The General Assembly declares its intent that this infrastructure must not compete with the commercial communications or information offerings of private sector participants.

(C) The goal of the South Carolina LightRail Consortium is to promote collaboration among participating clinical, research, and educational institutions throughout the State, region, and nation to accomplish the objectives stated above.