8096 - RFI TO SELECT PRIVATE PARTNER TO BUILD BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE FOR Washtena

Public-Private Partnerships for Filling Broadband Gaps

Washtenaw County seeks to support the deployment of infrastructure that will provide affordable, equitable, high-speed broadband access to residents, businesses, and anchor institutions and support economic development.  Broadband access is defined as service of at least 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload, but the County strongly prefers investments in a wireline infrastructure that can deliver at least gigabit capability to accommodate present and future bandwidth-hungry applications.

The County is seeking responses for public‐private partnerships to fill broadband gaps in certain unserved areas of the County. The areas considered unserved are those the County has mapped based on its extensive engineering surveys (or that are shown as unserved in the FCC’s Form 477 data) and that have not been funded by recent grants for fiber deployment. Figure 1 shows these areas.