Northeast Michigan lacks efficient broadband access, but projects both on a national and local scale aim to change that and spur economic development efforts in the Alpena area. Erik Frederick, chief connectivity officer at the Michigan High Speed Internet Office, is leading the efforts to connect everyone to the internet from city to countryside in Michigan. He is in charge of allocating federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funds to entities around Michigan that will help close the digital divide. Internet access “impacts nearly every sector of our lives,” Frederick said. “It is a foundational tool.” 

In comments made to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the recent docket looking at customer service practices, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) filed comments that said that big internet service providers (ISPs) don’t focus on customer service because they don’t have to. The CPUC said that only 26 percent of California residents have a choice between two fast ISPs. The federal government has been concentrating on making sure that homes have at least one fast option for broadband, and that’s an obviously good goal at a time when Internet access is considered by most households to be a necessity. But the numbers cited by the CPUC are not unusual. Across the country there are still a lot of places where homes and businesses have only one fast ISP option. There are real consequences for any neighborhood that has only one fast ISP. Such neighborhoods have no competitive options, and the one fast ISP is effectively a broadband monopoly in that community.