Manchester Township and Washtenaw County both release broadband reports
Broadband coverage in Washtenaw County, from Final Report Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Broadband Equity Sub-Committee, November 29, 2018
At the end of November, Manchester Township released its broadband study report looking at options for bringing broadband to the township. Ten days later, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Broadband Equity Sub-Committee released its final report. In summary, the County’s report states that broadband is important and rural Manchester residents need it. The Township’s report states that while possible, it won’t be easy to bring broadband to rural Manchester.
The County’s broadband subcommittee consisted of twelve members including Sharon Township’s Barb Fuller and Manchester Community School’s educator and Village resident Theresa Herron who met 19 times over a 15 month period. They heard from 29 guest panelists, including Manchester’s Chamber of Commerce president & DDA vice-chair Ray Berg, Manchester’s State Representative Donna Lasinski, Manchester Township trustee Lisa Moutinho, Sharon Township’s supervisor Peter Psarouthakis and Manchester High School teacher Jamie Woodring.
The county’s subcommittee found that Broadband access (defined as at least 25 megabit per sec download speed and 3 megabit per sec upload) is no longer a luxury and is essential for participation in modern society. They also found that about 20,000 residents or 8,000 households in the county currently don’t have access to broadband and that lack of broadband access negatively impacts residents’ education, economic development, property value, personal prosperity, health and safety, and quality of life.
Manchester especially stood out when it came to the gap of available broadband and education. The subcommittee found that students without broadband at home are at a significant disadvantage versus their peers, and that while there are students lacking access in all school districts in the county, by far the two worst impacted are Chelsea School District with 40.6% or 2,836 households unserved and Manchester School District with 69.5% or 2,327 households unserved. Woodring, who teaches German at Manchester High School, talked about the disconnect between student access to technology and their ability to use it outside of school. Manchester provides technology at a 1:1 ratio, an iPad for every student in kindergarten through 4th grade and a Chromebook for every student 5th through 12th. Students can take Chromebooks home by paying the annual insurance cost of $35/student (with insurance costs waived for those who qualify for free lunch).
Woodring stated that she estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 of the students aren’t able to take them home or don’t have wifi at home to use them with. She ends up using class time to let them do their homework on their Chromebooks. The lack of internet access also affects parents’ abilities to keep track of their students’ progress. Woodring stated, “Teachers expect parents to monitor their children’s grades, attendance, completion and submission of classroom assignments and test/quiz scores via the internet. When parents do not or cannot, it creates tension and frustration between the teachers and the parents.”
From Final Report Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Broadband Equity Sub-Committee, November 29, 2018.
The County’s subcommitee report shows that while most municipalities in Washtenaw county have less than 10% of households lacking in broadband access, with some like the cities of Chelsea and Dexter having 0% of households unserved, townships in our quarter of the county had higher percentages. Manchester Township has 18% of households without broadband access, Lyndon Township (which recently voted to install broadband themselves) has 83% of households without broadband access, and the three townships with least access–Freedom, Bridgewater and Sharon Townships–all have 100% of their households lacking broadband access.
Manchester Township is trying to address the issue of the lack of broadband access for their just over 1,000 rural households. The township hired CCG Consulting to investigate funding options for building a broadband network themselves for either the whole township or just the the rural areas of the township. The consulting firm was directed by the Township to find a non-tax solution, which meant using normal bank financing. They found three factors that will make bringing broadband to rural Manchester Township a challenge. First, the small number of potential customers spread across a large area means the cost laying fiber will be expensive per home and it will be difficult to operate a profitable ISP. Second, they found that the current County policy on burying fiber significantly increases the expense of laying fiber. Lastly, because bank financing requires equity, this project will require raising significant cash, most likely from potential costumers.
The most optimistic projection of equity needed is $3.6 million. Assuming 80% of rural residents and 60% of village residents participate, that amount of equity would require a contribution by each homeowner up front of $3,550 or else monthly payments of $47 per month if financed over 10 years or $35 per month if financed over 15 years. The report gave unlikely but possible alternative sources of equity as grants from governments, donations from businesses, grants or loans from other cooperatives (if the ISP was run as a cooperative), and donations from wealthy individuals.
The low density of houses means large ISP providers will not be willing to come in and provide service once the fiber is in place, and as a tax-funded broadband network is off the table, a township-owned ISP to manage the network is also off the table. This leaves a standalone for-profit corporate-run ISP or a cooperative. In either case, the ISP would be a small business operated by three to four local employees. This would mean reasonable customer service with local employees taking care of local maintenance issues, billing customers, and answering customer questions.
The study found that the rural area of the township did not provide a large enough customer base to cover the debt needed to build the network or reasonably support a stand alone ISP and that including the 900+ Village households as potential customers lowers the cost of construction per customer. They found from prior experience that most likely some but not all Village residents would prefer to switch to a local ISP but that getting them to contribute toward the equity needed to build the network in the same manner as rural households, will be a hard sell as they already have access to decent broadband.
The CCG report reminded Manchester Township residents, “Any solution is going to be expensive for homeowners, and it’s important to remember that if you don’t find a solution nobody else is likely to bring broadband to the township.”
Although less than half of the FCC’s definition of broadband, higher speed internet is coming to part of Manchester Township via AT&T. In the fall of 2015, AT&T accepted $435,687 per year from the FCC to bring better broadband to 1,617 rural customers in Washtenaw County, including some in Manchester Township. This funding comes from the Connect America Fund (CAF) and is being used to improve their cellular broadband 4G LTE network to speeds of at least 10 Mbps with a 1 Mbps upload. AT&T’s increase in cellular broadband may actually exclude our area from an often mentioned federal grant, the USDA’s upcoming e-Connectivity Pilot Program. The County’s subcommittee report states that if the USDA moves ahead with the proposed eligibility threshold that excludes households with 10Mb cellular service, current FCC maps will exclude all areas in Washtenaw County.
Manchester Township also asked CCG to investigate wireless as an option for bringing broadband to Manchester Township. They found that the woods and trees in the township makes it difficult to serve more than half of the people in the rural areas with wireless broadband. They also stated that the trees mean that many customers wouldn’t get the same kind of fast speeds for wireless networks possible in open farming areas. Likewise, 5G networks aren’t a solution for Manchester Township as a 5G network needs transmitters on poles that are close to homes and also needs fiber at or nearby to each pole transmitter and doesn’t make sense in low density areas. The report states, “nobody is likely to bring 5G to rural America just like they’re not bringing fiber. It (is) probable that the township might not even see 5G cellular for a decade or far longer, and it’s inconceivable that an outside ISP would build the fiber needed to provide 5G broadband.”
The County’s subcommittee is recommending to the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners that they develop a stated goal and plan to achieve 100% broadband access county-wide by 2022. They recommend the county conduct a county-wide feasibility study, build relevant maps, raise awareness of the problem, support the Lyndon Township initiative and the Michigan Broadband Cooperative, help communities get grants, identify and pursue investments, incentivizes broadband expansion, minimize and eliminate barriers that discourage broadband expansion, and more. They are also asking the board of commissioners to establish staff to carry out and coordinate the work, and they are asking the board of commissioners to renew the subcommittee to ensure continuity in pursuit of the goal.
In the County’s report, they break down each municipality working to bring broadband to unserved residents. For Manchester Township they state, “Manchester Township is reviewing their feasibility report. CCG consulting was asked specifically to explore all options that would provide broadband access to the Township, with a priority on alternative funding mechanism (besides a millage), as the Village of Manchester is included within the boundaries of Manchester Township and the Village elected leadership has repeatedly expressed concern that paying a broadband millage for duplicative services would negatively impact their quality of life. In the future, the Manchester Township Board of Trustees will hold a public town hall meeting to review the findings and recommendations of the feasibility study. The Board will then propose next/best steps at a subsequent public meeting.” Later in the report it summarizes for Manchester Township, “Feasibility Study completed ($20k); next steps uncertain.”
Read Washtenaw County’s Broadband Sub-Committee’s report at: https://www.washtenaw.org/DocumentCenter/View/11048/Washtenaw-BoC-Broadband-Committee-Report-FINAL-Compiled
Read Manchester Township’s Broadband Study report at: http://twp-manchester.org/Portals/1098/Doc/Manchester%20Final%20Report.pdf
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