While Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D) recommended 21 projects, one stood out for me: Merit Network’s middle mile project.
Merit Network is the innovative group behind opencalea and other open source projects that have been helpful to ISPs and small businesses. Merit’s $42 million project, $18 million grant, $18 million loan, and the rest contributed (partly in kind), consists of almost one thousand mile of 72-strand fiber. Merit is working with several local partners in different areas of the state. Merit’s application came with 70 letters of support and Merit notes that it has a history of bringing diverse organizations together. I strongly support Merit’s application, one of the projects the governor recommended.
The Beaver Island project is interesting. TDS Telecom has a number of ILEC applications across the U.S., many of which (it’s difficult to tell) could be requests for the funding of infrastructure that TDS might build anyway. Beaver Island is an exception. All TDS projects use DSL, and although DSL delivers neither the fastest nor the cheapest broadband (that would be fiber and wireless, respectively), DSL will have a legitimate role to play in some locations.
Beaver Island is located in Lake Michigan, west of the state and east of Green Bay. It is very remote and was once the home of a splinter Mormon cult. The number of households served was redacted, so I cannot tell whether or not the project is economical in terms of cost per connection, but given the geography of this remote location, I feel it deserves inclusion in the stimulus, and so does Granholm.
Tags: dsl, fiber, merit network