Survey is a step toward countywide internet access

Jared Leatzow, Grand Haven Tribune, Mich.
·3 min read

Sep. 3—There are still parts of Ottawa County that do not have access to broadband internet, county officials say.

In an attempt to remedy that, the county is conducting an internet usage survey that will help them to expand access to those underserved areas.

"There is a significant number of residents within the county's rural areas that do not still have access to reliable, affordable, high-speed internet," said Paul Sachs, director of the county's Planning and Performance Improvement Department. "... Given the extent, given this time period we're at right now, with the extent of federal and state dollars becoming available for broadband infrastructure enhancement — not only in Michigan, but across the country — it is an opportune time for us to leverage those resources and work in collaboration with the private sector to see how we can do the necessary high-speed telecommunications infrastructure across the county."

Sachs said expanding broadband internet throughout the county is an economic, educational and a health-care initiative; all four either rely on or use the internet in some way or another.

"Access to and use of the internet has become an integral component of everyday life in the 21st century," said Pierrette Dagg, director of marketing and communications for the Merit Network, a nonprofit, member-governed organization that provides high-performance computer networking and related services to educational, government, health care and other nonprofit organizations, primarily in Michigan. "Digital information has reshaped how individuals participate in nearly every dimension of society. It is imperative that communities leverage broadband network access to eliminate the homework gap and improve education, socioeconomic equality, telemedicine, public safety and economic development to maintain and grow the quality of life for their residents."

According to Dagg, there are 380,000 homes in Michigan that do not have access to broadband internet.

"This equates to 27 percent of households in the state with school-age children," she said.

With money becoming available to expand access, Sachs believes it is a good time to do this survey. Most data on broadband access that is out there is flawed, he says.

"Now is the time to quantify the anecdotal stories that we hear about all the time from residents across the county that don't have access," Sachs explained. "There's a desperation by many people to get service delivered to them, and current mapping provided by the FCC and other maps available from the state of Michigan showing our broadband infrastructure in Ottawa County — they are not accurate. We know this from the anecdotal stories. So, the importance of this survey is to quantify those areas across the county that have access issues."

Merit Network's Michigan Moonshot website explains: "Current household access data collection has challenges that include the granularity and level of measurement, the use of data (such as FCC Form 477 filings) that was not primarily collected to measure broadband availability, and the over-reliance on internet service providers as the major source of the data. FCC measurements are aggregated to the census block level, which often misrepresents the availability of broadband. If one home within a census block has access to broadband, the entire block is counted as served. Some for-profit (internet providers) that are not rooted in the communities they service have incentives to over-represent the number of residences they connect."

Sachs says there are homes in Ottawa County's Tallmadge Township, which is near Grand Rapids, that lack any access to broadband internet. Some of what the county hopes to accomplish with the survey is create partnerships and begin communication with telecommunications companies that otherwise wouldn't be interested in expanding access to these rural communities.

Another part of the initiative is to make broadband more affordable.

The survey is being done in partnership with the Quello Center for Information Policy at Michigan State University and M-Lab.

Other Moonshot projects are happening in Calhoun County and Saginaw Township.

To take the survey visit: https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dm2MMaq1UMTBFHMQ_Language=EN&fbclid=IwAR1AOBGDn7GTpAgRcSzzuJNjsay98Dh0m6-TalecrcHb5iQWNKcnzIx2huk.