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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In all, there are three projects,<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has proposed deep cuts to the Department of Commerce\u2019s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).<\/a> The cuts in the agency\u2019s budget would amount to a 20% decline from the Biden administration. Trump administration officials say the changes they are making to the NTIA\u2019s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program<\/a> will result in \u201cmore efficient and effective\u201d improvements to broadband service.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the changes they\u2019ve made are favorable. Some of them are a little bit onerous,\u201d said Irvin. \u201cBut nonetheless, I think it gives us the funding we need to do the projects that we contemplate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A project to improve access to broadband service between Flint and Port Huron is getting underway. The project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,237,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-28822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}