USDA Grant Provides Northeast Michigan Counties with High Speed Internet

In our current world, many of our daily operations rely heavily on internet usage.

Especially for rural communities like here in northeast Michigan, Alcona, Montmorency, Oscoda, and Iosco that have several small businesses and farms that need high speed internet to survive. Thankfully, AllBand Communications Cooperative is using $12 million from the ReConnect grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to do just that.

“It’s just as important as roads, water and sewer to help a community thrive and that’s what we’re trying to do, is invest into our rural communities to make sure they can be competitive, especially in a 21st century global economy,” said Brandon Fewins, Director for the state of Michigan at the United States Department of Agriculture. This will also help those mom & pop businesses to be competitive in the global market.”

The implementation of high speed internet into rural areas is critical for small businesses to operate. Not only will it impact 55 businesses across the four counties, but it also opens up the potential for more businesses to be created.

“It will attract the availability for new businesses to start up, because now they will have that access to broadband, so it’s really looking not only at trying to help the current businesses, but attract new businesses to our rural communities,” said Fewins.

Being in such an internet–dependent world, Fewins felt this was something that needed to happen for quite some time.

“To provide that infrastructure throughout rural America is a commitment that the administration had made, and now we’re seeing the results of that on the ground,” he said.

A timeline for this project to begin is still to be determined as AllBand Communications Cooperative is still waiting on matching funds from the state.