Courtesy photo The Presque Isle Electric and Gas Cooperative building is pictured.

ALPENA–After five years of construction work, 7,500 customers are now connected to fiber internet from the Presque Isle Electric and Gas Cooperative (PIE&G) in Northeast Michigan.

This is part of a long-term project by the PIE&G to make fiber internet and phone services more accessible in the area. The cooperative started construction on the four-phase project in 2021.

Two years ago, The News reported that PIE&G was 90% through phase two of construction and 4,400 customers in the region had access. Now, the cooperative is finishing the third phase and heading into phase four, the last of the project, PIE&G Chief Executive Officer Alan Berg said.

“We’re happy and proud to be part of the community to provide such a top-of-the-line service in rural and remote Michigan,” Berg said.

The cooperative has installed fiber internet as far north as Cheboygan down to Alpena, according to the cooperative’s website. Berg said the next phase of the project will be heading into Montmorency County.

The internet cooperative is also in the running for funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program; however, Berg said the timeline of when the cooperative could receive grants continues to change.

BEAD is a federal program that is working to expand broadband internet access across the country.

“It’s been a very fluid program and there’s been a lot of changes,” Berg said.

Michigan High-Speed Internet Office Chief Connectivity Officer Eric Frederick said that Michigan received around $1.6 billion dollars in funding through the BEAD program for fiber internet infrastructure, which was the fourth highest allocation of money given to any states and territories.

Despite this, Frederick said the BEAD program has taken a long time to be implemented.

“Early last year, Michigan had opened up its first grant round for the BEAD program to get those dollars out the door and to take applications to connect the unserved locations in the state,” Frederick said. “And then the federal administration changed and rewrote the rules for the program.”

Last year, the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced that there would be several reforms to the program.

“So we’ve been having to revise and update and go through a lot of steps to revise the program per the federal administration,” Frederick said. “So we’re at a point now where we are very, very close to having grant agreements signed with internet service providers.”

Frederick said 28 other internet companies across Michigan have also been chosen as subgrantees, but no internet provider has officially been signed to receive money. Frederick said the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office is signing grant agreements, but the announcement on when and what companies can receive grants is in the near future.

“Once those grant agreements are signed, the internet service providers who are building the infrastructure have four years to complete those projects,” Frederick said. “Some will move much faster than others…we want to get the infrastructure out there as fast as we possibly can, so we are trying to facilitate the quick deployment of that infrastructure.”

But for now, Berg said PIE&G is heading into Montmorency County. The project should end within 12 to 19 months. There are no plans for any more construction after that point, he said.

“We are considering what makes sense for the cooperative and if there are areas that we can serve,” he said. “But at this point, there’s nothing official of what we would be doing other than the original commitment to build to those that are in our electric footprint.”

Grace Walker can be reached at walke1ge@cmich.edu. This story was produced by the Michigan News Group Internship Program, a collaboration between WCMU Public Radio and local newspapers in central and northern Michigan. The program’s mission is to train the next generation of journalists and combat the rise of rural news deserts.