Meet the newest member of the
M33Access team
James Williams, a key member of our engineering staff, is wearing a tired smile
these days after the birth of his daughter, Josilyn Raeann Williams, on
Thursday, March 13 at 6:14 a.m. She weighed seven pounds, 10.5 ounces and was
20.5 inches at birth. James reports that Josilyn’s mom, Christine Knox, was
smiling too after many hours of labor. Josie is the couple’s first child.
 It seems like only
yesterday that we went online and began signing up our neighbors and friends to
dial-up service, bringing to our region for the first time widespread access to
the Internet. Believe it or not, and
frankly it’s hard for us to comprehend, it’s been nine years since M33 Access
was born. Our birthday is March 1.
Would have imagined, all
these years later, we’d have thousands of customers spread over a wireless
network of nearly 60 towers covering more than 10,000 square miles – one of the
largest grids of its kind on the planet.
Besides dial-up, we offer
a variety of high-speed services including wireless, DSL and T-1 lines, as well
as Digital Phone Service (voice over Internet protocol) telephone service. And through our
affiliate, Michigan Access, we’re a fully credentialed telephone company,
offering traditional telephone service statewide.
“We’re very proud
of all we’ve accomplished in the last nine years,” said M33 Access founder
and President Glenn A. Wilson, Sr. “But I promise you this is just the
beginning. We’ve got big plans for upgrading the technological
infrastructure throughout Northern Michigan to better prepare ourselves –
and especially our children – for a challenging future.”
M33 Access Joins Northern Michigan High-Speed ISPs In Unprecedented Partnership
GRAYLING – Seven prominent northern Michigan providers of
high-speed Internet service have formed a partnership in an
effort to deliver broadband service to rural communities
from Saginaw to the Upper Peninsula.
The Michigan Network Alliance was formed to route
Internet traffic faster and more efficiently throughout the
region with an interconnection agreement that is
unprecedented for this part of state.
The partnership includes: Central Solutions, Inc., of
Beaver Island; Charlevoix Wireless, Inc.; Cherry Capital
Connection, in Elk Rapids; M33 Access (ISP) and Michigan
Access (a telephone company), both of Rose City; Nodin
Communications, LLC, of Sault Ste. Marie; and SpeedNet, of
Saginaw.
The Alliance is distinctly separate from the recently
formed Northern Michigan Broadband Cooperative, whose
steering committee is exploring ways to expand broadband
service in a portion of the region. However, the two groups
share many of the same goals, and several of the Alliance
companies’ leaders also serve on the cooperative group’s
steering committee.
“We fully intend to do all we can to facilitate the goals
of the co-op,” said Mark Snyder, president of Charlevoix
Wireless, who explained that the ISP Alliance was borne
after months of negotiations that included many of the same
concerns as the co-op.
“We’re just not sure the proposed co-op will be able to
do what it’s setting out to do. And to ignore what we might
be able to accomplish collectively is not in the best
interests of these seven companies and their shareholders,”
Snyder said.
“In order to expedite services, we felt we could move
more quickly in fulfilling the needs of our communities than
other initiatives under way. A privately run entity is much
more fluid than a publicly controlled entity. And we’re
already here.”
While the Alliance has a list of its own long- and
short-range goals to develop and expand services, the
interconnectivity (Internet protocol routing) agreement
between the companies will immediately enhance overall
capacity of Internet traffic.
“And that capacity can be increased on demand,” said Tim
Maylone, founder and general manager of Cherry Capital
Connection. “This agreement will make it much more
convenient for consumers of our services to interact.”
In other words, he explained, whether you’re conducting
point-to-point business from Gaylord to Alpena, whether
you’re a grandmother in Mackinac City downloading photos of
the grandkids in Saginaw or whether you’re a student in
Charlevoix taking an online class from Kirtland Community
College in Roscommon, your Internet service is going to be
much more efficient.
Glenn Wilson, founder and president of M33 Access and
Michigan Access, explained that traffic generated in
Northern Michigan and bound for Northern Michigan will stay
in Northern Michigan.
“There’s no reason any more to send it anywhere else like
Detroit and Chicago and back and suck up a lot of bandwidth
in the process,” he said.
The challenge now, the group said, is finding the money
to expand high-speed Internet availability throughout the
region, much of it sparsely populated. It is exploring
potential funding sources through the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s Rural Development program and the Federal
Communications Commission, both federal agencies offering a
variety of grant and loan programs.
“It’s not an issue of whether the ISP’s can do it,”
Snyder said. “Of course we can. It’s just a matter of
dollars. That’s why we’re concerned about the potential
success of this new Cooperative that’s been formed. We’ve
already tried to get those monies.”
Among the Alliance’s immediate goals, Maylone said, is
“to interconnect our colleges in Roscommon, Alpena, Gaylord,
Petoskey, Sault Ste. Marie, Traverse City and others as
needed to facilitate distance learning.
“We will continue to compete with one another, but we’ll
complement each other, too.”
In other words, Snyder added, the technological
infrastructure is already in place bringing much-needed
services to the region more quickly than some people here
realize.
“We want to let our communities know there are providers
up here and we do play nice together,” he said. “Northern
Michigan really does have options.”
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