Work supported by the Rural Readiness Grant awarded to your BIA continues this week with a team from Advanced Communications & Data (ACD), a Lansing-based ISP, working to finalize a plan for an Island-wide fiber to the home and business. “The grant funds support our planning to bring modern broadband to the entre Island, not just part of it,” said Dick Mulvihill, who leads the BIA’s Broadband Task force. “The ACD team lead by Eli Gregg has already developed a complete plan for the Island using online data and aerial photography. They are here now to validate that plan by checking locations, looking at accessibility and for factors that could affect cost that aren’t apparent except up close,” he added.

ACD’s preliminary plan with work from the BIA’s task force and the Island’s Joint Telecommunications Advisory Committee showed an Island-wide system could be built that, even taking into account the needed millage support, could provide better broadband service than available now from TDS, STralink or other satellite providers for a lower end-user cost. “That’s a big deal,” says JTAC chair Kevin Boyle. “The work Eli and his team are doing will let us confirm the cost projections. Even if the costs turn out to be similar or a bit more, an Island-owned broadband system will Islanders control our digital destiny. We’ll no longer have to wait on outsiders or distant government to meet our telecommunications needs.”

You might see ACD team members walking around looking at potential fiber paths to determine how fiber might reach your home or business, and they might knock on your door to ask a question or two. Gregg says, “Our team treads very lightly when doing survey work. We respect no trespassing signs and leave nothing but footprints.” ACD employees wear vests or jackets with the ACD logos, and they are moving around the island in ACD company vehicles. They may leave a “door knocker” so you know they stopped by your place.

So what does this work have to do with all the roadside construction we saw on the Island this summer and early fall? That work involved two projects. Merit Networks was putting in conduit and fiber that will be used for an under-lake fiber link that will cross the Island on the way from the Up to the LP. That will bring fiber speeds to the island when it is complete but won’t provide any direct hookups to end-users. Merit was also installing fiber to connect key island locations like the school, library and health center to the Island’s interim broadband project that will bring high speed download and upload service to those locations as well as the township offices, the Historical Society and Community Center.

TDS crews were on the Island installing conduit that they say will bring fiber service to select Island locations. Initially they say their plan is to use that plant with their existing microwave connections to the mainland. So, there will be no increase in overall capacity they provide to the Island and the service could be subject to the same kind of recurring outages that have been causing issues for TDS customers on the Island. “Unfortunately, even though TDS has federal grant funding that made the Island ineligible for the biggest broadband infrastructure program in history, they have told the JTAC that they have no current plans to build Island-wide,” says Boyle. “So, we need to press ahead with plans for an Island-owned system that will bring service to all, not just a select few. And, we want to make sure that service is reliable like the service that has been available from Merit for the school and BIC Center for more than a year that remained up through the periods when TDS service was out.”

The survey work ACD is completing will be the basis for a proposal for the community to review and then decide on whether to proceed. “We’ll join with the JTAC to hold some community meetings to go over the plan…the costs, timeline and other details after we have the updated plan from ACD,” says Mulvihill. If the decision is made to proceed, the millage proposal is expected to be on the ballot next year.