Broadband Projects Shrink Digital Divide in Washtenaw County, Mich.
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A few Internet service providers laid fiber optic cable to provide high-speed Web to homes and businesses in southeast Michigan, and an interactive online map shows the progress being made.
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More homes and businesses have been using fiber optic cable from a number of Internet service providers. Some names are up and running. Some residents are anticipating having their phones hooked up quickly, while others are still working.
The county’s high-speed Internet providers are showing up on the accessible dynamic map, which shows where they are bridging them. Customers can look up an address to find out whether the Internet is active or in progress.
The state is attempting to be the first in Michigan to offer 100 percent of high-speed entry. For several years, a state effort has been helping to close a distance of some 8, 000 underprivileged properties.
On the image, components marked with good tones have active service. Where attributes are in various stages of development or activation are marked with patch-marked tones.
” The goal here is to get all of those items that have color in them to a good shade”, Chris Scharrer, the state’s broadband manager, said.
Scharrer, founder and CEO of DCS Technology Design, provided an upgrade to the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, Feb. 19.
He claimed that over the past few years, 7, 720 more qualities have benefited from Internet system.
” We do not have any activity going on in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Pittsfield Township, Salem or Superior ( townships )”, he said. The townships of Salem and Superior opted out of the job “feeling that they were very nicely covered with broadband.”
Lyndon Township was now fully covered by high-speed Internet. A property tax millage was approved by the township’s voters in August 2017 to make it available to all of the township’s houses.
Colorless items lack any dwellings or establishments on them.
The gap-filling job involved five Internet service providers.
Four of those — Charter/Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity, Midwest Energy and Communications, and Washtenaw Fiber Properties— have benefitted from American Rescue Plan Act money through the state. Midwest Energy and Communications received a boost from the FCC account, as well as a boost from state funding through the Connecting Michigan Communities Grant Program.
Through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund of the Federal Communications Commission, Mercury Broadband received cash. However, the business defaulted on tens of thousands of state qualities.
Missed areas, including in York and Dexter settlements, were moved to a different federal system, the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment system, Scharrer said. He is aware that Mercury Broadband will conclude the Bridgewater Township construction.
” The money will arrive for it, as long as the Ring plan doesn’t get cut”, Scharrer said, likewise saying it is in the application process.
He expects everything else in the state to be completed” by summertime”, he said.
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