A project to improve access to broadband service between Flint and Port Huron is getting underway. The project involves laying a 111-mile-long fiber optic cable through parts of Genesee, Lapeer, Macomb and St. Clair counties.
On Monday, standing side by side in a brutally hot motel parking lot, government and private sector dignitaries pulled a fiber optic cable to symbolically start the project.
In all, there are three projects, including two involving underwater cables beneath Lake Michigan. The intent is to extend broadband service to roughly 30,000 largely rural Michigan residents. Work on the broadband projects is expected to take several years.
The Trump administration has proposed deep cuts to the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The cuts in the agency’s budget would amount to a 20% decline from the Biden administration. Trump administration officials say the changes they are making to the NTIA’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will result in “more efficient and effective” improvements to broadband service.
Dan Irvin is the CEO of 123Net, which is overseeing the Michigan projects. Irvin said so far, the proposed changes have not affected the Michigan broadband projects.
“Some of the changes they’ve made are favorable. Some of them are a little bit onerous,” said Irvin. “But nonetheless, I think it gives us the funding we need to do the projects that we contemplate.”
