Broadband Access: State Resources
The first step in understanding broadband in the community is to determine where service is available and where it is not. Broadband access is the physical connection to the internet. Broadband coverage mapping has been conducted at a state and federal level in Michigan since 2010. These efforts have their benefits and issues, but ultimately provide a solid starting point for better understanding the availability of broadband in your community. The following provides information and resources for starting to define broadband access in your community and is intended to provide communities with a baseline of information. Additional information found later in this section will provide you with tools and resources for refining this baseline information and gathering data to help better define the issues and opportunities in the community.
Connect Michigan, a subsidiary of national non-profit and 501(c)3, Connected Nation, has been working to address and improve broadband in Michigan since 2009. The organization published the state’s first broadband coverage map in October 2010 and has been working with broadband providers and state agencies ever since to continually refine and update Michigan’s broadband coverage data.
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County Broadband Maps
https://connectednation.org/michigan/county-maps/
This website contains several broadband coverage maps for each of Michigan’s 83 counties. Maps can be viewed and downloaded as an image file or as a PDF. Each county has a set of coverage maps by maximum advertised download speed by technology, provider density by speed, households unserved by broadband by speed by household density, and broadband growth since 2014.
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Interactive Broadband Map
http://map.connectmi.org/
This map provides a myriad of data layers related to broadband coverage. Users can zoom to several scales to get a custom view of broadband in communities large and small. The map also offers the ability to enter a street address and the broadband and voice providers offering service to that address are listed. The Maps/Data button at the top offers users a variety of layers that can be added to the map including several regarding broadband coverage, speed, competition, etc., but also other resources include FCC registered tower locations, political boundaries, and the location of community anchor institutions. There are also Tools that allow users to draw boundaries to calculate the households served and unserved within a custom-defined area.
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Availability Calculations
https://connectednation.org/michigan/planning/
Tables on this site provide coverage data in a non-mapping format for Michigan’s counties and the state as a whole.
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