Officials are asking community members around Michigan to help shrink the digital divide.
The state’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program has a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Friday to challenge federal maps that outline which neighborhoods have reliable internet access and which do not.
Officials say residents are key to getting the information right and are asking people to report to slow internet.
"If they’re rural and they’re relying on satellite or they’re relying on some wireless technology, that’s not really very good. This is the best opportunity we’ve had in a while to leverage some federal dollars to try to get broadband to them," said Ingham County Controller Gregg Todd, a member of the county's broadband task force.
Michigan received nearly $1.6 billion in BEAD funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The funding will be distributed to communities with the greatest need for broadband improvements.
Ingham County categorizes home and businesses based on Federal Communications Commission standards. Locations are “unserved” if they do not have an internet connection available at a speed of at least 25/3 Mbps, and as “underserved” if their connections are available at 100/20Mbps and below.
Todd said the county had previously mailed out some 5,000 postcards to households that the county thinks may be miscategorized as having broadband service, urging residents to check the speed of their connection.
"If they didn’t pay much attention to that postcard when they first got it, pull it back out, take a look at it, and either test your speed on the sight that the postcard leads them to or let us know if they don’t have service."
Ingham County offers a webpage explaining the Broadband challenge and providing links to test and report internet speeds.
