These are exciting times for high-speed internet projects in Michigan.
As Livingston County continues to work on expanding internet access for its residents, news came that even more broadband money will be available to qualifying Michigan communities starting in 2024. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced last week that Michigan is getting an additional $1.5 BILLION to expand high-speed internet access throughout the state. That $1.5 billion is in addition to the $2.4 billion Michigan has already received for broadband access.
The funding is part of the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, under the $65 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and it will help ensure Michigan residents have access to affordable, reliable and high-speed internet.
Each state and territory received a minimum of $100 million, and the remainder of each allocation was based on the number of locations currently un-served by high-speed internet as identified on the National Broadband Map of the Federal Communications Commission.
That means Michigan’s un-served locations qualified the state for $1.4 billion more than the minimum, which begs the question: Could Livingston County receive more funds?
“We don’t have a lot of information yet,” said Kris Tobbe, Livingston County’s chief information officer. “But we think we’re in a good position and that we have the right elements (to qualify for funding).”
Details on funding opportunities should be known within the next couple weeks, Tobbe said.
Livingston County has already received more than $37 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, and officials have allocated more than $12 million of that to expand broadband.
There are currently two broadband expansion projects that will benefit Livingston County residents.
Three Michigan companies — DayStarr Communications of Owosso, 123NET of Southfield, and Peninsula Fiber Network of Marquette — are partnering to invest nearly $10 million to build a new 90-mile fiber route connecting Southfield and Lansing. The project will bring optical fiber opportunities to communities along the route, including Brighton, Howell and Fowlerville.
And recent reports detail the expansion of Livingston County’s 72-mile fiber optic internet trunk line that it runs with the Livingston Educational Service Agency. While the line is mainly for taxpayer-funded entities — schools, police and fire departments, and other municipal buildings — it won’t provide service directly to residences; it will, however, put service within a three-mile reach of most. That leaves internet service providers to get access from the trunk line into the homes of private customers.
And then there’s this project — described by Tobbe as “nothing short of a modern marvel” — which has nothing to do with Livingston County, but is illustrative of the breadth of broadband expansion in Michigan.
Peninsula Fiber Network — one of the three companies connecting Southfield to Lansing — will also be constructing undersea routes to connect Charlevoix to Beaver Island to Gulliver in the Upper Peninsula, and Benton Harbor to Chicago. It will also build overland routes connecting Charlevoix to Grayling, Port Huron to Flint, and Benton Harbor to Grand Rapids.
Those connections are part of PFN’s “Infrastructure for Michigan’s Peninsula and Critical Crossings” project, which will place a total of 535 miles of new fiber to under-served and un-served communities, helping ensure Michiganders have access to quality internet no matter where they live. The additional capacity will help provide lower costs and faster speeds, while improving reliability and redundancy for existing networks across the state.
PFN is able to do all that after it was awarded a $61 million “Middle Mile” grant from the IIJA to address the unique middle-mile fiber needs of Michigan’s two peninsulas. (“Middle Mile” is an industry term for network infrastructure that connects local “last mile” networks to service providers, telecommunications carriers, and the greater internet.)
