The dog that didn’t bark
With the help of Todd Hopfinger here at the University of Michigan, I’ve been trying to figure out the high-speed Internet access penetration story (numbers, speeds, costs) for Detroit, Pontiac, and Flint. I think it’swe’re on to quite an interesting tale, and I’ll cover it here as developments emerge.
There is apparently no public data available that is more fine-grained than the existing FCC zip-code level data. (The FCC is going to slightly improve the quality of the data gathered, but hasn’t yet.)
This means that if one person or business in a given zip code had access to high-speed Internet access, the entire zip code would be marked A Success. The actual number of subscribers, and the name of the carrier(s), is not revealed by the FCC. So even if just one business had a special deal for service, the entire zip code would be included. And we wouldn’t know how much service cost there or how competitive the situation really was.
Now, in 2002, former Gov. John Engler set up the Michigan Broadband Development Authority, which loaned federal money to communities and private companies to bring broadband service to areas of the state without it. As far as we can tell, they used the FCC zip-code level data. Engler was predicting that wider high-speed access in Michigan would create half a million jobs and half a billion in economic growth by 2012.
Governor Granholm has long been interested in high-speed Internet access. Back in 2004 she was proud to note that the Michigan Broadband Development Authority would be working to close the digital divide in Michigan, giving out loans to encourage infrastructure investment in underserved areas of Michigan. The state legislature funded the MBDA, and Granholm added members. The MBDA gave out about $20 million in loans over the next few years.
A year ago, the FCC allocated Michigan $20 million for high-speed Internet access improvements under its Rural Healthcare Pilot Project.
That’s fine, but what happened to the Michigan Broadband Development Authority? It was eliminated by the state legislature, according to a July 2007 article in the Grand Rapids Press. The whole effort has been branded a flop:
Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, R-Wyoming [attacked the MBDA]. . .
Sikkema said the expansion of broadband should be driven by the market instead of government.
“The broadband authority is one of the biggest flops in state government,” said Sikkema.
. . . . Telecommunications and cable company officials counter that the authority has done nothing but invite government interference into an industry that is expanding to most markets anyway.
“There really wasn’t a need for state money to develop networks, because the private sector was already doing that,” said Colleen McNamara, who heads the Michigan Cable Telecommunications Association. “Why would the state want to fund competitors to us?”
Why was it shut down? What’s taking its place?
And why isn’t there any data out there that’s useful? Hmm? I suspect the carriers take the view that more fine-grained information is confidential. We’ll see.