If you’re one of the residents in Washtenaw and Jackson Counties with poor broadband, you may be visiting this website and thinking “why haven’t I heard of this group sooner??” There is a good reason for that – although a few of us have been talking for several months now, we’ve only just settled on a name and put up a website. So, you’re not late to the party, you’re just in time to help us get rolling! Michigan Broadband Cooperative is made up entirely of community members from Washtenaw and Jackson Counties, with one simple goal – broadband for all of us. We’ve talked to the cable and DSL companies, and they aren’t going to run cables to our communities – too expensive. We’ve talked to the cellular carries, and their services either lack coverage, have data caps, or both. We’ve talked to our friends at the local wireless ISPs, and they are currently our best bet – but their wireless solutions are only a bandaid on the problem. We need an organized community effort to bring robust broadband service to our unserved and underserved areas – and Michigan Broadband Cooperative is that effort. We hope you will join us as we move forward with tangible efforts to bring broadband to our community, with the long term goal of gigabit fiber to the home.
We applaud your efforts to level the communication playing field for unserviced and under-served regions. Here in Victor Township, Clinton County, Michigan, Internet service is still very spotty. Cable for some, DSL for some others and several cumbersome and expensive options not suitable for average citizens for everyone else. High speed access ought to be as ubiquitous as electrical and telephone. Good luck!
I see that this post was from 2014. Are there any new updates? I remember filling out a survey that was going to Lansing what was the outcome of that?
Hi Raymond, thank you for your comment. You’re right, much has been happening and we are overdue for an update. We will work on a new blog post here but please also make sure you have filled out our sign up form to receive email updates. The survey you are referring to yielded some valuable results that have been shared in Lansing by Representative Driskell, and has provided the basis of a financial model for our own efforts. You can see the results of the survey summarized by township on our “communities” pages.
I think this is a great idea. Co-Operatives are such a great resource and I believe are under-utilized. Electric providers did this in Michigan (largely after the fall of companies like Wolverine Power) in rural areas and it is going strong and working well. I’d like to see this spread to any muni – and remove the exclusivity agreements that do not seem to be serving the communities well.