Berrien County Broadband Availability Survey Finished

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The results are in from a parcel-by-parcel survey of broadband availability in Berrien County, and now local governments can use the detailed data to seek support for expanded broadband. DCS Technology did the study for the county, and founder Chris Scharrer tells WSJM News he found plenty of pockets of the county with no broadband.

“There are 86,000 parcels in Berrien County,” Scharrer said. “73,000 of them are occupied, meaning there’s a residence there, people live there, there’s a farming operation or a small business. Out of those, there are currently 11,539 that currently do not have access to high speed internet.”

Are the pockets lacking in broadband availability all concentrated in rural areas?

“Surprisingly, no. Every municipality – there are 39 municipalities in Berrien County – and there’s only one, the city of Watervliet, that is 100% serviced right now.”

Scharrer says even in St. Joseph Township and Benton Township, they found homes with no access. Meanwhile, Galien Township is 100% without broadband availability as defined by DCS. Scharrer says only fiber that allows speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second counts. Cable companies never rolled out service to some areas for profitability reasons, but Scharrer says now is a once in a lifetime opportunity to use federal dollars to make broadband availability universal. His engineers drove 2,500 road miles to do its study. Now, the Berrien County Board of Commissioners will use the data to address the issue of availability.

The full report from DCS is below:

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