Ann Arbor’s Merit Network to Receive $70 Million to Help Connect Rural Communities

Washington, DC - Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15) joined with Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Assistant Secretary Lawrence E. Strickling today to discuss a $70 million dollar grant for Merit Network, Inc.  In addition to Michigan State University and Bloomingdale Communications, Inc., the NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) selected Ann Arbor-based Merit for Recovery Act grants which will finance the creation of a 1,210-mile fiber network linking the homes, businesses, and community organizations of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula to research and educational communities in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota at speeds between 100 megabytes-per-second and 10 gigabytes-per-second.

The project will provide infrastructure and critical access to advanced information technologies creating economic growth across the state and long into the future.

"These grants will be used to improve broadband Internet and computing infrastructure in Michigan, which is critical to modernizing the state’s economy for the 21st century," said Dingell during the announcement in Ann Arbor today.  "Improved broadband Internet access and familiarity with computers will especially benefit those in rural Michigan and ensure they are not passed over by future developments in what is increasingly an information-based economy."

The projects receiving funds are part of a program – administered by the NTIA and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) – to expand broadband access and adoption across the country. 

More information about USDA’s and Commerce’s Recovery Act efforts is available at http://www.broadbandusa.gov.  More information about the Federal government’s efforts on the Recovery Act is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/recovery.