LinkMichigan To Address State's Telecom Needs

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), in partnership with several public and private organizations, has outlined a plan to address telecommunications infrastructure needs across the state.



LinkMichigan, released last week, addresses several telecommunications infrastructure issues or concerns that were increasingly facing the public and private sector, including:

• Dissatisfaction with broadband or bandwidth availability in the state.
• Lack of an adequate backbone infrastructure in many regions of the state to carry fast-speed broadband traffic.
• Little or no information on availability and accessibility of telecommunications infrastructure.
• Lack of understanding by many communities as to the importance of developing telecommunications infrastructure in their region.

Four recommendations are outlined to construct a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure throughout the state, including:

• “Leverage Statewide Public Demand to Create a High-Speed Backbone: The Michigan Department of Management and Budget is being asked to take the lead on this step that involves collective purchasing of the state’s advanced telecommunications services, including higher education users, K-12 users, local government users and any other public partners. This step also involves: requiring provider(s) to build and maintain a high-speed backbone infrastructure that extends to most regions of the state to serve these customers; and requiring winning vendor(s) to resell excess network capacity on a non-discriminatory wholesale basis to increase competition and encourage investment in regions that might not otherwise attract new service providers.
• “Implement Tax and Permitting Fairness: The Michigan Public Service Commission is being asked to act on this step that will establish a level regulatory playing field for all telecommunications carriers. The step also involves: enacting right of way permitting systems to create common rules for all carriers; and establishing one common fee system to replace differing fee and taxation systems in place around the state today.
• “Increase Access to Information: The MEDC and its local partners will take the leadership role on this step by working to enact laws and/or rules requiring all telecommunications carriers to provide specific network location and capability information. This step also involves: developing and enforcing quality-of-service standards so that businesses and other purchasers of advanced telecommunications services are able to plan and not have business operations disrupted because of continual installation delays; and linking reporting to the approval of right-of-way permits.
• “Provide Community Assistance: The MEDC will take the lead on this issue by providing local community planning grants so that local communities can develop their own last mile solutions. The MEDC will also encourage communities to link or leverage their local strategies to the statewide backbone initiative.”

LinkMichigan, which also includes a brief appendix of different local and state approaches to telecom issues around the country, can be downloaded from the MEDC website: http://medc.michigan.org/