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Silos help bring wireless Internet to farm country
Posted on Friday, May 21 @ 09:59:27 EDT by audit |
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Anonymous writes "Rural Michigan is experiencing a broadband boom.
Up in the Thumb, high-speed Internet access is growing as fast as the corn and soybeans, with 16 grain silos now sprouting antennas that beam wireless access across a wide swath of farmland that stretches from Frankenmuth on the west, up the Saginaw Bay shoreline to Caseville on the north and back south to Bad Axe and Ubly, at the lower edge of Huron County.
Scott Zimmer, whose Air Advantage company (www.airadvantage.net) runs the project, says another 15 wireless Internet towers are expected to be erected by the end of the year.
"Up here, the land is flat and the silos are our equivalent of a skyscraper," says Zimmer. "They're anywhere from 120 feet to 180 feet high, and the beauty is they're already standing so we don't have to erect expensive towers to support the antennas." according to Zimmer.
Zimmer says about 600 customers have signed up for the program, most paying about $40 a month for broadband access. "Our customers tell us that having high-speed Internet is as important in its own way as electricity," he says. "Farmers and business owners say it's critical for monitoring grain prices and the weather and communicating with customers."
But the Thumb isn't the only sparsely populated part of the state that has broadband hopes. Up in the northeastern part of the Lower Peninsula, a Michigan State University team of students and researchers has come up with a plan to bring broadband to the Northeastern Michigan Council of Governments, which consists of Otsego, Alpena, Cheboygan, Alcona, Montmorency, Crawford, Oscoda and Presque Isle counties.
Lack of broadband access is hurting the area by stunting rural development and job growth, and is affecting emergency services, according to the project's leader, Mark Levy, MSU professor of telecommunication information studies and media.
More than 140 students and several faculty members helped develop the plan, and many will continue to help in exploring technologies, legal issues and economic issues that citizens and government officials would need to tackle in order to have broadband access.
The report prepared by the MSU team suggested funding sources and ways to share in the costs of bringing broadband to the region.
Russ White, an MSU spokesman, said the various governments and agencies involved in the report will be drawing up their own plans over the next few months. "
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