Every student should have the ability to complete their homework at home. It's evident that not all students have equitable access to quality internet at home. In the interest of ensuring that all future students in our district have the access they need, MASB is sharing information about the State of Michigan’s Broadband Mapping Challenge, which will help secure critical federal funds to expand quality, high-speed broadband to homes in our district.
The state of Michigan is carrying out a 30-day challenge process to identify all locations in our state without access to high-speed internet.(high speed = equivalent to or faster than 100 Mbs down and 100 Mbs up, which I assure you the vast majority of us do not have access to, even with Starlink, especially regarding the upload speed)
Beginning on March 25th through April 24th, residents can visit the challenge website to look up their home address and submit necessary corrections to the state internet provision map.
Our region has been broadly mis-reported by the ISP's, who state that the majority of our households have access to speeds at or above 1000 Mbs down and 1000 Mbs up. This, as I'm sure we can all attest to, is most assuredly not the case by any metric, imaginary or otherwise. We must ensure that everyone receives an opportunity to participate in this challenge, so that our collective voices will be heard. This is likely a once in a generation opportunity to update our antiquated, historically disregarded infrastructure (we're over 20 years behind the rest of our state), and we simply can't afford to miss the boat on this one!
Even starlink users can and should submit challenges if their area is being mis-reported on the map. Every validated challenge will potentially assist in greater funding being allocated to our region towards the fiberoptic development
The website was developed by Merit Network, a trusted statewide nonprofit research network, and has been endorsed by MASB.
The result of the challenge process will be a final state broadband map that will be used to determine which locations are eligible for funds from the $1.59 billion BEAD program to build internet infrastructure in Michigan.
For emphasis: This program is likely the only opportunity we'll receive in this decade for our region to get all of our students, families, and businesses updated to 21st century-level infrastructural standards, with high-speed (1+ Gigabit, or 1000 Mbs up/down) broadband for as many households and businesses in this region as possible.
Please pass this on to any members of the community who may not see this. We need as many to participate as possible in order to help bring this great leap forward to fruition!
If you have any questions about the challenge website or communication materials, please contact Merit Network at challenge@merit.edu.