By John Raffel
Correspondent
The connection of the first customer of 123Net under the Allegan County broadband expansion program began earlier this month. Coralee and Lynn Zandbergen were one of more than 11,000 county residences to gain access to high speed internet through the $65 million program.
The funds come from three sources: the county’s allocation from the federal American Rescue Plan funds, ROBIN funding from the State of Michigan, using federal funds, and 123 Net funding.
The Zandenbergens were the first ROBIN funded connection in both Allegan and Michigan. Over the next 18-24 months 123 Net will lay 1000 miles of fiber optic cable throughout the county.
“The program will enable the underserved and unserved county residents to be connected in real time to global currents,” commissio chair Jim Storey said. “Coralee Zandbergen said she was
delighted with the connection speed, a major improvement, in her view, over the troublesome satellite connection she used previously. It required frequent snow removal from the service dish in wintertime.
“She said it would take up to 10 minutes for the satellite to connect. At a news conference last week, I pointed out that without the constant encouragement of township supervisors Jim Pitsch, Mike
VanDenBerg, and Russ Van Dam, Salem, Gun Plain, and Overisel, respectively, and the Commissioners’ courageous 4-3 vote in 2021 to preserve the ARPA funds for broadband expansion over other demands, Coralee might still be in a 10-minute wait each time she wanted to connect.”
Roughly 2 years ago Frontier buried a fiber optic cable from Hamilton west along 133rd Avenue all the way to 52nd Street where it terminates in a box mounted on a pole. To this day, I don’t believe they have connected one single customer to that line. In the meantime, I’ve been relying on that same painfully slow satellite service for my internet connection. And at the same time my Frontier telephone landline on 53rd Street has been rendered totally unusable because of static and noise due to the wires in the street being so degraded that the technicians are unable to find a good connection. Cell service you ask? One bar on AT&T if I stand in the driveway, no signal on any other carrier. This new network can’t come fast enough for my neighbors and I!