Several rural counties in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula are soon to get high-speed internet service where none currently exists. Michigan Central Broadband Company received a $14.9 million grant from the federal government to connect homes, farms, and businesses to high-speed internet in Crawford, Kalkaska, Otsego and Presque Isle counties.
Almost half the homes in these counties are either “underserved” (download speeds between 25-100 Mbps) or “unserved” (download speeds below 25 Mbps.) Most of the broadband access is in and near the counties’ city centers like Gaylord, Onaway, Kalkaska, and Grayling. Outside of these areas, internet access is extremely spotty and slow or completely unavailable.
Paul Gunderson, Executive Director of the Gaylord Area Chamber of Commerce explained that broadband access is “terrible” outside of the downtown Gaylord area. “I was just looking at the Michigan Broadband map this week and it’s much worse than any of us thought. In many places there’s no broadband available of any kind.” These limit the ability of people in these areas to work from home.
These types of investments are critical because telecommunications companies are often reluctant to spend the large amounts of money needed to connect the small, diffuse rural populations which are often in hard-to-develop areas.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, “This really is critically important to the future of rural America. Whether it’s distance-learning opportunities for our students, telemedicine for hospitals, doctors, market development for our small businesses or precision agriculture for our farmers, the internet — high-speed internet — is absolutely essential.” Students without high-speed internet access have been shown to have measurably lower GPAs than those who have broadband service.
Crawford and Presque Isle Counties are particularly hard hit with over 40% of their homes and businesses without high-speed internet access. Michigan Central Broadband Company will use the ReConnect grant to connect homes, farms, and businesses to a fiber-to-the-home network with download speeds of at least 100 Mbps.
The grant is provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect Loan and Grant Program which is partly funded by the Biden-Harris infrastructure law. In 2022 and 2023, the program awarded $120 million in loans, grants, and loan-grant combinations to local communities in Michigan. The goal of the ReConnect program is to “facilitate broadband deployment in areas of rural America that currently do not have sufficient access to broadband.”
Since 2021, through the Biden-Harris administration’s investments in rural infrastructure, the USDA has announced over $2 billion to 107 projects that will expand access to high-speed broadband to more than 300,000 people nationwide.
THREE KEY FACTS:
- Four counties in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula will see major improvements in high-speed internet access thanks to a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect Loan and Grant Program.
- The grant to Michigan Central Broadband Company will connect 360 people, 52 farms and seven businesses in Crawford, Kalkaska, Otsego and Presque Isle counties to a fiber-to-the-home network with download speeds of at least 100 Mbps.
- The ReConnect program works to facilitate broadband deployment in rural communities and awarded almost $120 million in loans, grants, and loan-grant combinations to local communities in Michigan in 2022 and 2023.
