Several Internet providers have been connecting more homes and businesses with fiber optic cable. Some addresses are up and running. Some residents can expect to be hooked up soon and other work is ongoing.
The searchable interactive map shows where providers are filling high-speed Internet gaps in the county. Users can search an address to find out where Internet is live or pending.
The county is trying to be the first in Michigan to have 100 percent universal high-speed access. For several years, a county effort has been helping to close a gap of some 8,000 underserved properties.
On the map, properties marked with solid colors have active service. Hatch-marked colors indicate where properties are at various stages of construction or activation.
“The goal here is to get all of those parcels that have color in them to a solid color,” Chris Scharrer, the county’s broadband manager, said.
Scharrer, founder and CEO of DCS Technology Design, provided an update to the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, Feb. 19.
He reported 7,720 more properties have gained access to Internet infrastructure in the last few years.
“We do not have any activity going on in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Pittsfield Township, Salem or Superior (townships),” he said. Salem and Superior townships opted out of the project “feeling that they were pretty well covered with broadband,”
Lyndon Township was already completely covered by high-speed Internet. In August 2017, voters in the township approved a property tax millage to bring it to all homes in the township.
Uncolored parcels do not have homes or businesses on them.
Five Internet providers have been involved in the gap filling project.
Four of those — Charter/Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity, Midwest Energy and Communications, and Washtenaw Fiber Properties — have benefitted from American Rescue Plan Act funds through the county. Comcast also got a boost from state funds through the Connecting Michigan Communities Grant Program, and Midwest Energy and Communications also got a boost from the FCC fund.
Mercury Broadband got funding through the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. However, the company defaulted on tens of thousands of properties in the state.
Defaulted locations, including in York and Dexter townships, were moved to a different federal program, the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, Scharrer said. It is his understanding Mercury Broadband will finish the build out in Bridgewater Township.
“The funding will come for it, as long as the BEAD program doesn’t get cut,” Scharrer said, also saying it is in the application process.
He expects everything else in the county to be completed “by summer,” he said.
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